


do it all again (think you're my best friend)

by shuofthewind



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bechdel Test Pass, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family Issues, Fluff and Angst, Holidays, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Tropes, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 07:57:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5777647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This, she tells herself, is silly. The minor-freaking-out bit, not the fake-dating bit, or the please-be-my-ally-against-my-crazy-family bit. She shouldn’t be freaking out. Not even a little, because she’s better than that. It’s not like she’s more than used to dealing with the fact that she may have possibly had a tiny crush on Matt, way back at the very start, when he’d just been a pretty smile in her Intro to Criminal Justice class. Because she is. She’s way used to dealing with that, so much so that most of the time she doesn’t even remember it.</p><p>It’s just—it’s harder when he’s holding her hand, that’s all.</p><p>[No powers AU. Darcy POV.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	do it all again (think you're my best friend)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/gifts).



> This turned out way longer than I anticipated, but w/e.
> 
> Title from The Kids Aren't Alright by Fall Out Boy. (Cheers, lovely.) 
> 
> Trigger warnings: mental illness (depression) and discussion of it; emotional manipulating/abuse, some gaslighting, alcoholism, slurs of LGTB+ identities (especially lesbianism and asexuality). ....I understand that this fic is fluffy, but I'm cruel.
> 
> There are also gratuitous _The West Wing_ and _The X-Files_ references because I can.
> 
> Basically I hit every single one of my favorite fluff tropes with this one and you have no idea how few fucks I give about it.
> 
> Lorna is named Lorna because (since Darcy is named after _Pride and Prejudice_ 's hero) I thought Lorna could be named after _Lorna Doone_ and keep up the tradition. She's not Polaris. I like Polaris, and would not turn her into this big of an asshole. 
> 
> Also, aro-ace Jen Walters. Fucking fight me.
> 
> For anyone who has read some of my other Darcy fic--generally she has the same backstory no matter how I write her. In other fics, Katerina dies when Darcy's about nine. In this one, she didn't. Which pleases me, because I love Katerina.
> 
> Family tree, because it's confusing:
> 
> Katerina came over from Russia, and had Lorna with a man who later died. Lorna's father was a Banner, so; Katerina's dead husband's sister's child is Jen. (The Banner family doesn't survive too well.) Jen's mother, Elaine, married Morris Walters, a sheriff, who is notoriously reclusive. Katerina remarried when Lorna was in her late teens (she had Darcy as a teenager) to Sam, whose children are Carmen and Zachary. Renee and Tess are twins; Renee is Carmen's sister-in-law. 
> 
> I've gone through and fixed it, but there's clarification! 
> 
> Unbeta'ed. I'm done staring at this. If there are errors, I'll fix them later.

“I,” says Darcy, “need a boyfriend.”

She’s sitting on Matt’s floor and studying for her Disability Law final, which means it’s perfectly justified that Matt nearly spills his coffee when she says it. It _is_ kinda out of the blue. Still, it’s logical to her, considering her phone is blinking with like six texts from her cousin Kitty, and she’s been thinking about this (in the back of her mind, at least) for weeks. He fumbles the mug back into his hands, and then says, “I thought you said you were done dating for a while.”

“I _am_ done dating. I just need a boyfriend for a weekend.” She considers. “Like, a fake boyfriend.”

“You need a fake boyfriend for a weekend?”

“I told you I’m going back to Georgia for my cousin’s wedding, right?” Darcy leans back against the couch, tips her head back to look at him. “Apparently my aunt Renee is carving time out of her insane schedule to be there, and that means I need a fake boyfriend.”

Matt blinks. “Because your aunt is coming to your cousin’s wedding.”

“Because my aunt, bless her crazy heart, let the woman who was _basically_ the love of her life divorce her last year, and she’s spent every sober minute since trying to think of ways to fix other people up.” Darcy chews on the end of her mechanical pencil. “It’s a little aggravating to go to a wedding single anyway, because people pity you, but like—you add Renee, things get messy.”

“You could ask Foggy to go with you,” Matt says, after she’s read another three paragraphs in her textbook and her eyes have started to cross. “He’d be good at it.”

“You think Marci’d let me?”

Matt opens his mouth, and then shuts it up tight again. “Fair point.”

“I thought so.” She closes her book, and sighs. “Just—it’s not a big deal. I can go alone. It’s just if Jen’s not there then my mother’s gonna try to be an asshole and Aunt Renee will be bitchy and make pointed comments about my continued singledom and it’ll suck, that’s all.”

“Jen’s not coming?”

“Jen landed that case yesterday, remember? She was going to come, but they’re putting her on point as lead prosecutor. It’s the first time the DA’s office has done that. She can’t exactly ditch because Kitty’s getting married. It was already gonna be a tight squeeze because I have finals until like….basically the day of. Dragging Jen away is basically going to be impossible.” Darcy smooths her hands over her jeans, and then gets up so she can pace. The muscles in her legs are jumping, and she needs to move. “I dunno. It’s just gonna be a pain in the ass.”

“I mean.” Matt fidgets with his hands for a second or two, scraping a nail into a cuticle. “I could do it, if you wanted.”

“Be a pain in the ass?”

He huffs. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“You’d pretend to be my boyfriend for Kitty’s wedding? Aren’t you dating someone right now? Isn’t that like…against the Ten Commandments or something?”

“I’m not,” Matt says. “And even if I was, it’s not like it’d be a problem. I’m helping a friend over the winter holidays. I’m fairly sure that’s filed under one of the Seven Virtues.”

She can’t think of anything to say. Her tongue feels like a cactus. The longer she stays quiet, the shiftier he gets. Matt curls a little, tucking his chin in closer to his chest. “If you don’t feel comfortable—”

“No, I mean—it’d work, it’d definitely work, I was just…thinking of whether or not I’d regret inflicting my family on you. Which, news flash, I would, because they’re basically a bunch of monkeys. You know how primates like to throw their shit at each other to start fights? That’s my family. And it would mean you missing Christmas and stuff because everyone in my family’s Jewish—I mean, we’re Reform and we don’t care all that much about Hanukkah either, but, y’know, that means generally the whole Christmas thing isn’t…really a thing, and then there’s my mother—”

“Hey.” Matt leans forward. The next time she stalks by, he snags the back of her sweatshirt, and tows her back onto the couch. Darcy doesn’t quite look at him. “If you don’t want me to come, it’s okay.”

“No, I mean—I’d definitely want you to come, that’s not a question. I just don’t know if you want to suffer through it.”

Matt takes his glasses off, folds them up and sets them on the table. When he settles back into the cushions, she’s kind of tempted to curl up into a ball and have him pet her hair, because she feels very tiny, at the moment. A Laputian powering a Jaeger. “I mean, I’m Catholic.”

Darcy snorts in spite of herself. “You’re really sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” _In through the nose, out through the mouth, Lewis_. “I’ll call Auntie Tess and let her know to change the ticket out for you. Just—I know I’ve told you this before, but my family can be absolutely batshit crazy. Tess and Carmen and Kitty, Gran and Grand, they’re great, but the rest of them—”

“Darcy, it’s okay. Seriously.” Matt turns a little to face her. “I’m not going to run in terror because half your family happens to be made up of assholes.”

“You might want to.” Still, when she flops sideways across the couch and rests her cheek to his knee, Matt hooks his fingers through her hair without comment. “Just—I’m warning you now, you might want to.”

“No,” he says. “I won’t.”

He says it the same way he might say the sky is blue, or that he’s addicted to coffee, or that Foggy’s probably the best friend either of them have ever had. Indisputable things. Immutable things. She closes her eyes, savoring it.

“Well,” she says. “That’s nice to hear. If you keep doing that, though, I’m gonna fall asleep.”

“So tell me about Disability Law.”

Darcy heaves herself off the couch, and goes to grab her textbooks.

There’s a strict schedule they have to adhere to, Darcy finds. They spend two days in Georgia (well, she and Matt spend one and a half because they have finals, which, thank fuck, she’s not sure she’d be able to handle the full two) and then they all fly out to Chicago for Kitty’s wedding (another two days), and then she and Matt fly back to New York. She’s really, really grateful that Piotr’s family is paying for the tickets, because she wouldn’t be able to come otherwise, and Kitty is one of her favorite cousins. (Kitty’s also a year and a half younger than she is, so the fact that she’s getting married and apparently really excited about it is…somewhat intimidating.) The night before her flight, Jen sticks her head into Darcy’s room, armed for war in her glasses and pins stuck through her hair. “This is for Kitty,” she says, and presses a small wrapped package into Darcy’s hands. “ _Don’t_ give it to her while your mother is in the room. Or while her mother is in the room. Or while any parent is in the room.”

“Jennifer, are you giving our baby cousin a sex toy?”

“Yes,” Jen says, in a very dry voice. “I, the one woman in our family who is openly sex-repulsed, actually went and bought a vibrator for our baby cousin as a gift on her wedding day. For God’s sake, Darcy.”

“Hey, _I_ would have gone with a strap-on, we have no idea what Piotr’s into.”

“And I’m sure you’ll spend the whole time trying to figure it out.” Jen’s cheeks go a bit pink. “It’s just something my mother used for her wedding. I d-don’t plan on getting married, and, y’know, one of us should have the chance.”

“You’re not giving it to me?”

“You planning on getting married in the next week?”

That sounds like possibly the worst idea in the history of mankind. Darcy shakes her head, and slips the little package into the front pocket of her backpack. Jen heaves a sigh, watching it go.

“You sure you want to do this, Jen?”

“It’s on loan,” Jen says. “Kitty uses it, you’ll use it if and when you need to, and then we k-keep the chain going. Person to person to person. That’s how my mom wanted it used.”

“Probably gonna have to skip me.” Darcy puts on a drawl, lowers her voice. “ _God, don’t be such a shrew, Darcy._ ”

“P-Please don’t imitate her. You’re too good at it and it frightens me.” Jen twists her hands together, and then stands, dropping a kiss to the top of Darcy’s head. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

“’kay,” Darcy says. She doesn’t look up until Jen’s shut her bedroom door behind her.

It’s nearly midnight when she finally gets all her shit together, and catches a taxi over to Matt’s, because it’s easier to just stay there and not have to worry about tracking him down in the middle of JFK than it is to possibly miss phone calls or sleep through her alarm or something. The dress Kitty wants her to wear is already in Chicago, so until then, all she needs is a duffel bag and her school backpack (it’s the only thing big enough to fit both her laptop and Matt’s Christmas present, so whatever).

Matt’s still awake when she uses her key, sprawled half-on, half-off his couch with his earbuds in. He must have the volume on low, though, because when she sets the keys next to the bowl by the door, he turns around to face her. “Thought you wouldn’t be here until later.”

“Jen went to bed because of court and they actually remembered to tell me which house we need to go to.” She drops her bags near the door. “You’re a fucking lifesaver, Matt, seriously. Do you realize how matchmaker-y and gross my aunt can get now that she and Marina are divorced?”

“I assume the answer is _extremely_ , but…”

“Majorly. Exceptionally. All other synonyms apply.” She clambers over the back of the couch and curls up with her knees against her chest. Matt shifts over a little to give her room, but otherwise he doesn’t move. “What are you listening to?”

“Audiobook.”

“Don’t you dare say Thurgood Marshall.”

Matt’s lips twitch. “I don’t have the MP3 of that on my phone.”

She grabs his phone, and unlocks it. “Hannah Arendt? _Really_?”

“What’s wrong with Hannah Arendt?”

“Nothing, if you’re a philosophy major. Or you want to start a fight with one.”

Matt’s eyebrows go up, and stay there. It’s really the only answer she needs. She gives him the phone back, pressing it lightly into his palm so he can close his fingers over it, and then crawls back off the couch so she can steal coffee.

“I still don’t know how I feel about your cousin and her fiancé paying for my tickets.”

“That’s something to argue with Kitty about, not me. And I don’t argue with Kitty anymore. I will argue with literally _anyone else_ , but I will not argue with Kitty Pryde, especially not three days before her wedding.” Matt keeps things clean, usually. It’s easier for him to find things if he puts them back right after use. Still, one of the mugs is in the wrong place. She grabs it, and snitches the last of the coffee out of the machine. “How did Family Law go?”

“Other than Chen nearly failing Louis Strahms on principle because he showed up an hour late, it was fine.” Matt hooks his earbud back in. Darcy pulls a bag of Kit-Kats out of the freezer (they’re hers, marked and signed; she writes her name on them because Foggy’s a thief) and then knocks the freezer door shut with her elbow. “Cavill still wants me to take Disability Law next semester.”

“And I still want to shove a boot up Cavill’s ass, but sometimes we just don’t get what we want.” She comes around the couch again, curls into the cushions. The light from the billboard is more than enough for her to be able to make out his expression, barely smiling, like he’s trying not to. “He’s being so fucking pushy about it and I don’t get why someone who works in Student Resources is actually this much of an asshat.”

“It’s not like he’s trying to be an asshole.”

“You’ve told him like five times by now you want to go into Crim. He’s only pushing Disability at you because you happen to be blind. Same way Rosetti keeps trying to get me into Family Law because I was an emancipated minor and I happen to have a fucking uterus.”

“He thinks you’d be good at Family Law because you aced Contracts with him in 1L and he wants more people in our year to go into something outside of the DA’s office.”

“Don’t make me like Rosetti when I’m angry.”

Matt catches her ankle, curls his fingers over the bone. “Darcy. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. Cavill’s being a stereotypical asshat and I’m allowed to be mad about it, even if you’re not, because he _shouldn’t._ And he’s old enough to know it.” She breathes in the fumes from her coffee mug. Matt loosens his grip on her ankle, rests his palm over the arch of her foot. “I may be slightly stressed right now.”

“Tell me who I should worry about,” he says. “With your family. Other than your mother.”

“My mother you can just tell to fuck off. I know I probably will by the end of the week.” The corners of his mouth turn down, a little, and Darcy shoves her legs forward, pressing her feet in between the pillows and the small of his back. “Look, there are many reasons why I left my grandmother’s house to stay with Jen, the primary one being that at one point my mother was so drunk that she tried to punch me in the face. I am more than entitled to a few _fuck off_ moments.”

“Never said you weren’t.” Matt shifts around, and finally leans back into the couch cushions, squashing her feet. “Just—I don’t like that that’s how you have to think of it, that’s all.”

She can’t really think of anything to say to that, so she pushes her big toe into his spine, instead. Matt doesn’t flinch, even though it must be freezing. “It won’t be all bad. There’s my aunt Tess, Kitty’s mom—she’s nice, usually, but family gatherings usually bring out her bitchface and Kitty getting married will probably make it worse. Aunt Renee the matchmaker is her sister, and Aunt Renee is—I mean. She’s not completely horrible, but she never, ever has a good first impression of anyone. She’s kind of like Regina from _Once Upon A Time_. She grows on you, but like…fungus does, sorta. So, avoid her if possible.”

“Avoid the fungus aunt.” His lips twitch. “Understood.”

“Then there’s my mother, who _I_ am going to avoid. My grandmother is the only one that we actually really need to worry about, with like—guessing that this isn’t an actual thing. But she’s cool, she’d keep the secret.”

“You talk about her a lot.”

“She’s boss, is why. She’s the only person in the world who can still scare my mother, and it’s wonderful.” Matt steals a Kit-Kat from her bag, and Darcy lets him. “I’ve never met Piotr so I don’t have a clue what his family will be like. My uncle Carmen, Kitty’s dad, he’s pretty cool. Eye of the hurricane style. He’s my grandma’s husband’s second son, they changed the name because _Prydeman_ was…kind of too German.”

“For who?”

“For Americans. Same way we changed _Lewinsky_ to _Lewis._ Which, thank God, because Monica Lewinsky was a thing and that would have been hell to suffer through.” She leans her cheek into the couch cushion, shifting her grip on her mug. “Um, so, my family tree is kind of...complicated? Like. My mom was born out of my gran's first marriage, but he died when Mom was little. He's how I'm related to Jen, though, he was Jen's mom's brother. Apparently Banner children die early. Then Gran married again, to Grand, and we turned into a branch of the Prydes."

"Not that complicated."

"It gets worse when you throw in Renee and Tess though, because Renee's hung around so long she calls Grand _dad_ and then we sound like a bunch of incestuous  _X Files_ rejects. But I mean, Renee and Tess have been a part of the Pryde family since before I was born and their parents are both dead, so like...people bonded." She sighs. "So, names you need to remember. My gran, Katerina Pryde. Grand—that’s Gran’s second husband, Sam Pryde, he had a stroke a few years ago and doesn’t speak a lot of English anymore. Then my mom, Lorna Lewis, and whichever wildly inappropriate male person she has found in the past three weeks. Aunt Renee Czierowski is single at the moment, thus the matchmaking, so it’ll just be her and her three-year-old—no, wait, he’s five now. Her five-year-old. Which is good, because he’s now old enough to shut up when you tell him to instead of screaming bloody murder when everyone’s hungover. Anyway, Renee, her five-year-old Zeke, and probably Piotr will be there. The Prydes, though it’ll just be Carmen and Tess and Kitty. And it’s possible that Grand’s first son will come too, but I doubt it. Zachary has this huge clan out in Milwaukee or something and you usually can’t shift him for anything but Passover.”

Matt turns his face towards hers again, lips pressed together. “You sure you want to do this?”

“What, visit my family?”

“Yeah.”

Darcy sets her teeth into the inside of her cheek, just for a second. “I want to see Kitty get married,” she says. “And that means I have to deal with my mother for a few days. It’s a trade I’m good with.”

“The last time you went you cried for a week,” Matt says, and she’s not sure if she should scowl, or if she should scoot around and let him hug her, because dammit, she thought she’d managed to keep that private. “We don’t need to do this, Darce. It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

Darcy rolls up the bag of Kit-Kats, shunting them onto the coffee table. She draws her feet out from behind his back, and leans forward just enough that she can scuff her hand through his hair, mussing it up as much as she can. “You don’t have to worry,” she says, when Matt tips his head in surprise. “I’ll be fine. My mom can’t throw anything new at me, and besides: it’s for Kitty and Piotr. I’m going, and I’m going to have fun if I have to kill someone in order to manage it.”

“Because that’s the healthiest approach.” Matt catches her wrist, and draws her hand away from his hair. “I’m gonna shower. You should probably sleep.”

“I’ll _be_ asleep when you get back out. Even with coffee and the hellboard.” Darcy puts her cup on the table. “Don’t make that face. I’m not kicking you out of your bed when you’re voluntarily going with me to Georgia to suffer the vile temper of my mother. _Especially_ because it means you’re giving up Christmas in New York for it.”

"Well." Matt heaves himself up off the couch. “It’s not like I’d be doing much for Christmas anyway.”

“You’re missing midnight mass with Father P tomorrow. I know you like doing that, even if you’re really bad at going to church.”

“I don’t mind,” he says. “And you're taking the bed. You never sleep when you use the couch.”

“I do so.”

“You lie and say you do, but you don’t.” He shakes his head. “Your voice always goes higher when you lie.”

“That—” She can’t think of anything to counter that, so she doesn’t even try. “I’m not stealing your bed, Matt.”

“Either you use the bed and I’m on the couch, or you sleep on the couch and I’m on the floor, but either way, I’m not getting in the damn bed.”

She opens her mouth, and closes it again. He’s wearing the _I will not be gainsaid_ face, not the _I am open for debate_ face, and _Jesus_ , he makes her mad sometimes. Still, she unfolds herself from the couch. “I hate it when you do this.”

“I’d rather not have you bite my head off tomorrow,” Matt says, and catches her by the shoulders as she goes by. When he puts his lips to her hairline, she nearly jumps. It’s not something he does very often, Matt. She’s pretty sure that physical affection—the offering of it, not the endurance of it—is something the nuns ironed out of him, because it had taken a year for him to stop twitching every time she rested her hand to his side or kissed his cheek or knocked her elbow into his ribs. He’s much better about it now, but he still doesn’t reach out to her the same way Foggy might. He hooks his hand under her hair, around the back of her neck, and holds her still. “You promise me you’re not lying when you say you’ll be okay?”

She heaves a sigh, and shuts her eyes. She doesn’t realize how much she’s leaning into him until Matt braces, until he shifts his weight and pushes back into her. “Even if I wasn’t, I’d still be going. I told Kitty I would be there, and I miss Gran and Grand.” Darcy rests her cheek to his shoulder for a moment, and then says, “Besides, you’re coming with me. Already means I’ll make it through all right.”

Matt draws a line along the nape of her neck with his thumb. Then he clears his throat, and says, “I can’t promise I’ll be an accessory to murder, but other than that I’ll do my best.”

“That’s why you’re my favorite,” she says, and pats his cheek before slipping away. A few minutes later, she hears the shower start. Darcy sits and stares at the windows, at the curtains that should probably be closed and the rainwater trickling down the glass, before curling on her side to watch the rain fall. The shower’s still running when she falls asleep.

.

.

.

For once, the taxi doesn’t take the hellishly crowded way to JFK, so even with the Christmas traffic they reach the gate a good twenty minutes before the plane takes off. It’s not a particularly long trip, the city to Atlanta, and Darcy’s definitely had longer, but it’s interesting flying with Matt. The attendants show them on before everyone else, and so it’s a lot less aggravating to lug her shit through the aisles than it would be if she were stuck waiting behind a family of three screaming children (which happens, because hell is apparently her hometown). Matt falls asleep about twenty minutes into the flight, knocking into her shoulder, and so Darcy settles in with her earbuds and her laptop and uses up fifty percent of her battery power watching movies instead of doing the responsible adult thing and coming up with more crap she should warn Matt about before they land. She doesn’t want to wake him, though. He never sleeps enough, and finals means he’s probably pulled all-nighters on and off for a week at least. Plus, unlike Foggy, Matt generally doesn’t drool on her shoulder, so it’s not too much bother to orient around him. The stewardess keeps getting an _awwww, cutie kitten_ look on her face when she goes by, though, which is somewhat irritating nonetheless.

She calls Foggy when they land to let him know the plane didn’t crash, and gets shunted straight to voicemail. Matt’s still blinking and trying to keep his balance when they head out into baggage claim, and she slips her arm through his and walks carefully so she doesn’t run into his cane. They don’t actually have to wait for any bags, but it’s a simple enough place to wait for Carmen. Darcy doesn’t realize she’s rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet until Matt (sitting on a bench, trying to stay out of the way) sets his cane aside, and catches both her hands. “Breathe.”

“It’s only Uncle Carmen.” Out of all of them, Uncle Carmen is definitely the one she would have picked to start any of her friends off with. He’ll just say hello and then shut up for however long it takes for Darcy to talk herself out, and that’s cool with her. Still. She clicks her teeth. “He’s always late, though.”

“And you’re always early, so it’ll balance out.” He seems to realize all at once that he still has her hands, because Matt goes rigid, and lets her go. He starts to, anyway. Darcy crooks her fingers and holds on. Matt’s eyebrows bounce up into his hair.

“We didn’t really talk about what you’re comfortable with me doing,” she says. “I was—well. I was gonna ask on the plane. But you fell asleep.”

He makes a face. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. You needed it.” She lifts his hands in a little question. “They’re probably gonna expect me to be kinda touchy. I mean, I’m normally touchy, but—but touchy even by my standards. So you need to tell me right now what you’re comfortable with, because I don’t want to, you know. I don’t want you to get freaked out.”

“I won’t freeze up, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His fingers curl into hers. “I don’t mind you touching me, Darcy. If I did, I wouldn’t have agreed. ”

Darcy lets out a breath. “Okay. I just—I don’t want to freak you out.”

“This goes both ways, y’know,” he says. “Is there anything that you don’t want me to do?”

She thinks about it, turning over and over in her head, hunting for cracks or flaws. She knows how Matt is with girlfriends, generally—she hasn’t met all that many of them, and he hasn’t dated anyone since Elektra that she’s known about, and that ended two years ago now, so it’s possible he could have changed. But from what she remembers, he’s fairly hands-off in mixed company. He settles into their space, maybe, leaves his fingers resting at the small of their back or an arm around their shoulders, but he doesn’t do anything really overt. Maybe in private he’s different—he’s probably different, she thinks, looking at him, and holy shit, this is weird to be thinking about, especially when he’s _right there,_ holding onto her hands, right in her space—but in front of other people…meh.

“Don’t grab my ass and I won’t grab yours,” she says, and Matt snorts and ducks his head to hide the way he’s trying not to smile.

“Pretty sure I can manage that much.”

“I, on the other hand, will have problems, because somehow you have an amazing ass. It’s really not fair. Your ass is better than my ass. Even Foggy wants to grab your ass.” She considers for a moment. Then she wedges her way between his knees, and presses his palms against her waist, her hands to his shoulders. Matt stops laughing as if it’s been cut out of him with shears, and looks up at her, big eyes and round glasses. “This is okay?”

“Yeah.” He wets his lips, and then flexes his fingers over the curve of her hip, carefully, like he’s testing her. Darcy doesn’t move. Matt traces a circle with his thumb, once, and then twice, and when she doesn’t flinch away he just keeps going. “Yeah, this is okay.”

“So, things I might do.” She’s kind of proud of how steady her voice is, right now. “I may sit on you.”

“You do that already.”

She tugs her sleeve over her hand, and cuffs him behind the ear, gently. Matt grins again. “And I’m usually drunk, so don’t be sassy.”

“Would I be here if I weren’t?”

“Probably not.” She cuffs him again, because she can, and then puts her hands back to his shoulders. “I may sit on you sober. I will probably sprawl, and lean, and hang on you because that’s at least what Kitty and Aunt Tess will expect, but I do that already so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.” She swallows—her mouth feels very dusty, all of a sudden—and then says, “I think we can probably get away without actually kissing. Forehead and cheek and other places, those are okay, but like—you don’t need to kiss me.”

“At a wedding?” He sounds…oddly, he sounds very mild. “If you say so.”

“It’s Kitty and Piotr’s wedding, nobody will notice if we don’t.” Why the hell does her tongue keep sticking? “It’s not as though my aunts are going to line up against the wall and make us play Spin The Bottle or something. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay then.” He’s still stroking his thumb in a circle against the fabric of her sweatshirt. She’s pretty sure he’s just doing it without thinking, not even knowing. Darcy sets her teeth into the inside of her cheek, and doesn’t mention it. “If the worst thing I need to expect is you sprawling like an orangutan I think we’ll be all right.”

Darcy flicks him in the nose. Matt rears back, fingers digging into her waist, and makes the weirdest face she’s ever seen on him, nose scrunched up, eyebrows snapping together like magnets. “Darcy, what the _hell—_ ”

“Your face _—_ ” She’s wheezing, because holy Christ she has never seen Matt make that face and that was a _brilliant_ face, holy fuck “—Matt, your _face—_ ”

“You,” Matt says, and viper-strikes with two fingers, hitting the ticklish spot just above her hip with the kind of pin-point accuracy usually used by snipers. Darcy muffles a shriek, and tries to wrench away, but she can’t quite manage it. She’s laughing too hard to stand up straight. If she lets go of him, she’ll fall over. Matt’s laughing. “You’re a _brat._ ”

“Ohmigod, stop—stop stop stop stop, no, just—your _face_ , you should have—”

“Darcy,” says a third voice, and Matt freezes. Darcy almost chokes on her own tongue, and starts to yank back. Before she can manage it, though, Matt shifts his hands to her ribs, and holds on. Her knees are still on the verge of giving out. She twists around. Kitty and a _fucking behemoth of manflesh_ are standing a few feet away. The behemoth looks like a cross between a Rottweiler and a concerned terrier, his hands folded neatly behind his back. Kitty’s grinning. Darcy fights the urge to fan her cheeks.

“Kitty,” she says. “And, um. Hi, you’re—you’re Piotr, right?”

“That is correct,” says Piotr. His accent isn’t light, but it’s not heavy, either. Kind of rolling, like Gran’s. “I apologize for being late. Carmen requested that we come collect you at the last minute.”

“Dad’s stuck handling the ragebeast,” says Kitty, flapping a hand. “We would’ve called but decided you’d be stuck waiting here until we found you anyway so it didn’t really matter. Aunt Lorna didn’t say you were bringing anybody.”

“Jen was saddled with work at the last minute, so I asked Aunt Tess to switch out the name on the ticket. I don’t think Mom even knows.” She’s steadied out, now. Darcy steps back, catching Matt’s hands and pulling him to his feet. The tips of his ears are very red underneath his hair. “Um, this—Kitty, this is Matt. Matt, this is my cousin Kitty, and her fiancé Piotr. Who is _fucking huge_ , what are you, six-foot-twenty?”

Piotr turns red, and looks pleased. “Six-seven.”

“It’s great, right?” Kitty peels away from the Russian leviathan and squeezes Darcy into a hug hard enough to actually crack a few of her vertebrae. “It’s like we’re the definition of smol and tol. The internet would go nuts over us. Hi, by the way,” she adds, and hugs Matt, too. She lets go almost immediately, because Matt’s shoulders hitch up around his ears and he kind of flares his fingers the way a cat might puff out its fur. Kitty cocks an eyebrow at Darcy, who says nothing. “Kitty Pryde.”

“Matt Murdock,” says Matt. His shoulders are still hovering near his ears. He’s going to be twitchy for a while, she can already tell. Darcy bites her lip, and then takes his hand, threading her fingers through his. Matt turns his face towards her, just a little, and then squeezes hard enough that it almost aches. When Darcy looks back at Piotr and Kitty, Piotr’s watching them. Kitty hasn’t noticed.

“Shit, girl, is this all you brought?” She heaves Darcy’s duffel bag up over her shoulder. When Darcy makes a little protesting sound, Kitty actually bares her teeth. “C’mon, this is the easiest thing I’m going to be doing all day. Mom’s gone all wedding hellhound and Aunt Renee found the scotch. Trust me, it’s a relief to get out of the house even if it’s only for an hour or two.”

“Is it that bad?”

“When I left Aunt Renee was bitching about how fake Hanukkah is and how people only really started celebrating it to compete with Christmas—which, I mean, yeah, that’s…kind of true but like, I like the candles. I just didn’t want to argue with her this year. And Dad actually forgot he had to come and get you because Mom found out that the florist is high or sick or dying or something, and I’m just kinda—” she flaps a hand, makes an _ehn_ noise. “The wedding’s more for Mom at this point than it is for me or Piotr. Yeah?”

Piotr takes Darcy’s duffel from Kitty (Kitty, for some reason, doesn’t protest _him_ doing that) and slings it over his shoulder. “You’re not…technically wrong.”

“And that is why I am marrying this man,” Kitty says. Matt hasn’t let go of Darcy’s hand. “Anyway. Have either of you eaten? Only I really want to go and get a fucking sandwich without Mom freaking out and thinking I won’t fit into my dress or whatever. I don’t think I’ve had more than a few crackers and maybe half a cup of coffee since this time yesterday.”

“Aunt Tess didn’t strike me as the type to turn into Bridezilla.” Darcy snags Matt’s cane off the bench, presses it into his hand. When she slips her arm through his, he catches at her fingers again, and holds on. _This is normal,_ she tells herself. _You’ve done this before._ Maybe not twice in ten minutes, but yeah, she’s held Matt’s hand before. She guides him sometimes and once or twice she’s held it just because she can, because something had gone wrong or something was _going_ wrong or because she just needed to hold someone’s hand for a minute or two. _You’ve done this before, quit being jumpy about it._ “You okay?”

“Other than worrying my mother’s going to drop dead of an aneurysm on my wedding day, I’m peachy,” says Kitty. “You good with sammiches?”

“Don’t taunt me, Pryde.”

By the time they get to the New York Sandwich Shop on the west side, Matt’s relaxed enough to start talking again, which really is only for the good. He doesn’t let go of her hand—he keeps their fingers linked on his knee, sketching his thumb over her tendons in a cyclical pattern that she could probably time a watch by—but he’s talking, and he’s snapped back into charming, which is excellent. Kitty must also spread the word via text before they get back to the house, because Aunt Tess, who usually hugs everyone, doesn’t even try to make a move on Matt. “I hate to tell you this,” she says, once they’re inside and Piotr’s vanished to help Uncle Carmen with something. (Carmen had given Matt a single look, dropped a kiss to the top of Darcy’s head, and disappeared. She’s pretty sure he’s going to head down to the basement to watch football and avoid Tess until she takes a chill pill or drinks a bottle of wine or possibly both, which may be depressingly stereotypical henpecked husband behavior, but she can’t…really blame him.) “I just—I only have one room set up for you, and there’s no other space—I suppose we could move the twins before they arrive, they’ll never know we did it—”

 _The twins?_ Darcy thinks, but she shakes her head. “Tess, it’s okay. We can squish. Just—don’t tell Uncle Zack, okay? He’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

“We’re not telling your Uncle Zachary,” says Tess, with the sort of venom that usually means _I am going to make you crawl into your own grave._ Darcy glances at Matt sidelong, but he’s keeping a remarkably straight face. “Your uncle is an undisciplined, uneducated, sexist little snotrag who can piss up a rope and _die_ in Milwaukee for all he’s done for us—”

“Auntie Tess.” Darcy squeezes Matt’s fingers, and then slips away from him. “Hey, take a breath. You’re at like…eighty-thousand when you need to be at ten.”

Tess puffs up like a chicken, ready to scream. Then she looks at Darcy’s face, and heaves a sigh. She hooks Darcy’s hair behind her ears. “Why do you always have to wear these ridiculous hats? They make your face so round and puffy.”

“I like my hats. They are full of bounce and flair and occasionally have antlers sticking out of them.” Still, she tugs off her cap and leaves it on the table. “We’ll get our stuff to the room and then help, okay? I’m sure Renee’s been a bundle of joy.”

“Renee has been moping about Marina again. Not to mention your mother, who’s always a delight.” Darcy digs her teeth into her lip, and doesn’t ask. “She went out with Katerina and Dad a few hours ago to run some errands, they should be back soon. I set you up in your old room, so once you get your stuff put away—damn it. I need to call the florist back, if she misses her deadline because of a headcold I am going to _kill people—_ ”

And with that, Tess is off again. Darcy waits until she’s out of sight before she snatches her hat back off the table, and pulls it down over her ears. When she looks at Matt, he has the same kind of shellshocked look that Foggy had when he’d heard that Darcy had made friends with Marci Stahl. She touches her fingers to the back of his wrist. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” He shakes his head a few times, like he’s trying to clear cobwebs. “She just—she sounds like you.”

“Which is funny, because so far as I know the pair of us have no blood bond. But everyone always says that.” She hooks her arm through his again. “C’mon. Stairs are three steps forward and then to the right. There’s only two floors, though you can get to the basement through the kitchen if you need to and Gran has a ladder to the attic in her bedroom. Kinda doubt you’ll wind up heading either way, the basement is full of crap and the attic has a ghost in it.”

“It has a ghost in it.”

“It’s just old pipes. Don’t tell Zeke, threatening to lock him up there with a liver-eating ghost-monster is the only thing that managed to shut him up last year.”

It’s really, really strange, walking into her old room and having Matt Murdock come with her. It’s been cleared out for the most part. All the old posters and boxes are gone, shoved into a closet or into the attic. Her grandmother’s been leaving potpourri in here. It smells like dead rose petals. Darcy shoves the rolled-up sleeping bag off onto the floor at the end of the bed, and sits down, sinking into the comforter. Matt stands in the middle of the floor, hands in his pockets, awkwardly. The room is so small that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted, the dresser, bed, and duffel bags crammed into a space that someone else might call a closet.

“So,” she says. “Um, yeah. Apparently we’re sharing. Which would horrify Zachary if he were here because he’s _very_ conservative. Like—he’s the only guy in my family who gives a shit about religion. Which is why he lives in Milwaukee and the rest of us are in Georgia or South Carolina. I’m kind of really glad that he’s not coming now, actually. If he met you he’d call you a bunch of bad names and then refuse to speak in your presence afterwards.”

Matt reaches out, and dusts his fingers along the wall, scuffing over the light switch. He turns it on and off. “Sounds like a nice guy.”

“There are loads of nice conservative Jews,” says Darcy. “My uncle is not one of them. He’s like a sad-sack Santa Claus with rage problems.”

Matt huffs a little. When she reaches out and tugs at his sleeve, he drops down next to her on the bed, perched on the very edge like he’s going to bolt if she says the wrong thing. Still, when she knocks her shoulder into his, he leans back into her and stays there. The door’s open, sure, but like—she’s pretty sure he’s just doing it to remind himself where she is, at this point.

“You doing okay?” Matt says. Darcy sways back and forth on the bed, and watches Matt drum his fingers against his kneecap. She’s always kind of envied Matt’s hands, just a little bit. Which is silly for her to say, because whatever, guy hands, but like—they’re nicely shaped, not quite as boxy as hers, and there are little flecks over his knuckles from bag-work. They kind of look like art. She laces her fingers together, and considers for a second.

“I should be asking you that. I forgot to tell you how huggy we can be.”

“Believe it or not, I kind of expected that part.” Darcy rocks hard into his shoulder, bumping him with her elbow, and Matt caves a little, laughing. “Seriously, I’m fine. It could have gone way worse. Human sacrifice might have been involved.”

“Asshole,” she says. “Whatever. Once we get some wine into Auntie Tess she’ll calm down a little, I think. And Uncle Carmen’s just being a scaredy-cat.” She smiles. “I feel bad for Piotr. I think it’s his first time dealing with all of us at once, so like—you guys could bond over the sheer insanity of the Lewises at full power. Like the Death Star, but like…with more tantrums and fewer Force bolts.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Darcy considers. Then she bounces off the bed, and shuts the door so she can hang her coat on the back. “So. Your options are stick with me and probably run into every monster in the house in the next ten minutes—or the next hour, who knows when my mother’s coming back—or hide in here and be labeled a recluse. Everyone in this building who is sane would not blame you for the latter.”

Matt rests his hands to his knees for a moment. Then he gets up. When he takes off his jacket, Darcy steals it and hangs it next to hers. “I’ll stay with you, I think,” he says, and she’s smiling when she leads him back down the stairs.

.

.

.

Aunt Renee is asleep on the sofa, but her five-year-old is making a terror of himself in the backyard while Aunt Tess paces back and forth and yells into her cell phone. Darcy leaves Matt in the kitchen for a few minutes and confiscates the rock Zeke keeps trying to use as a baseball before setting him up inside with her old GameBoy and _Pokemon Blue_ (she keeps _Pokemon Yellow_ for herself, because c’mon, y’all) to shut him up. By the time that’s done, Aunt Renee’s waking up, but she’s still just drunk enough to be woozy, so that means herding her up the stairs and locking her in her room so she doesn’t trip and fall back down them. (“Darcy, I didn’t know you were here!” “I get the feeling you don’t know what year it is, Aunt Renee.” “Fuck you, it’s 2012.” “Off by nearly twelve months exactly, well done.”) Then there’s the absolute wreck that is the kitchen, because whoever last used it (she has a feeling it was her mother) didn’t bother cleaning up after making what looks like an army’s serving of lasagna. Her grandmother doesn’t have a dishwasher, so she recruits Matt into it, because there’s no way in goddamn hell she’s washing all of these things alone.

They’ve finished the whole of the kitchen and Darcy has dragged out pots and pans and started to cut up onions (Katerina’s marked _stroganoff_ on the fridge white board, which is easy enough for her to help start even if she’s usually completely incapable of anything but waffles and fajitas) when the front door opens again, and German bursts through it. Grand’s in a wheelchair, lately. When Darcy comes to the door of the kitchen, Gran’s rolling him up into the entryway, a bag of groceries on his lap. Grand’s eyes crinkle when he sees her, and he reaches out to her in silence.

“Hey,” she says. His hand is papery, skin cool against her fingers. Darcy knocks her hip into his shoulder. “Hey, Grand.”

He says something in German she doesn’t understand, and keeps smiling like it’s her birthday, which she’s pretty sure means _welcome back, please take your crazy mother out into the backyard and bury her alive._ In the living room, Zeke shouts at Rattata, and starts frantically button-mashing. She’s pretty sure she’s not getting her GameBoy back after this. “How are you?”

“ _Gut_.”

“How was shopping?”

“ _Gut._ ”

“Now I know you’re doing fine, because you’re lying to my face. There’s absolutely no way shopping was good. You hate shopping. Shopping is like your Kryptonite, except it doesn’t glow and you don’t have superpowers.” She thinks for a moment. “Well, you don’t have Clark Kent’s superpowers, anyway.”

Grand squeezes her fingers, the crooked smile getting wider. The stroke means he still can’t move a lot of his right side, but he still smiles the same. Darcy bends, and kisses his temple. Her mother’s still standing at the trunk of the car, on the phone with someone, Darcy’s pretty sure. There’s an odd shrillness to her voice that usually means she’s going to start yelling soon. She scoots one of the Costco boxes off of Grand’s knees. “If you’re okay with dealing with Zeke, the living room’s good. I sent Renee upstairs about half an hour ago.”

Katerina mutters something under her breath that might be an insult. Knowing her grandmother, it probably is. “Take this, too,” she says, and rolls a bag of potatoes onto Darcy’s already loaded box. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

“Just like old times, huh,” she says, and Gran winks at her before leaning forward and murmuring into Grand’s ear. She’s never going to get over the whole trilingual thing that her grandmother has going. She feels kind of inept just listening to her jabber in English, let alone Russian or German. Darcy kicks the front door shut, and heaves the bag of potatoes and the box of—whatever this box is into the kitchen again.

It’s only a minute or so before Katerina’s back. She dumps the last of her groceries onto the dining table (Matt leans back out of the way on instinct, which is a good idea, because seriously, Costco boxes) and engulfs Darcy in the sort of hug that makes Kitty Pryde’s look like child’s play. She mumbles something in Russian that Darcy can’t quite catch, and tugs on a strand of her hair. “You’re late.”

“I am _not_ late.” She kisses Katerina’s cheek. “Just because you went out ages ago to do grocery shopping and wound up distracted in Costco doesn’t make me late, it makes _you_ late.”

Katerina snorts, and puts her cold hands to Darcy’s face, watching her for a moment. Then she nods once. “You look better,” she says, and kisses her forehead. “Good.”

“I looked bad last time?”

“You looked tired last time.” Katerina’s eyes flick over her face. “You still look tired, but at least you don’t look sad.”

“Gee, thanks, Gran,” says Darcy, and Katerina snorts. “Where’s Lorna?”

“Getting her things out of the car and shouting at her latest acquisition. I don’t remember his name, but I don’t think it’ll matter, it sounded like he was ending things. Where’s Jennifer?”

“Jen had work and couldn’t come.” Darcy bites her lip, and then draws away from Katerina. “I—um. Yeah. Gran, this is my—uh. This is Matt.”

Gran blinks, and her eyes go wide. She looks from Matt (who’s heaved himself up out of the chair, shifting around, looking distinctly nervous) and then to Darcy (who might be really red right now, because she _feels_ really red right now, and it really shouldn’t be so hard to pull off this fake dating thing when she hasn’t even said the word boyfriend yet, _why is this so awkward_ ) before she tips her head back, and peers down her nose at Matt Murdock. “Lorna didn’t tell me you would be bringing a boy back with you.”

“Because I don’t tell my mom anything about my life anymore and even if I did it’s not like it’s her business?” Darcy frets with the frayed hem of her sweatshirt. “I told Aunt Tess he was coming, she’s the one who changed out the tickets. She didn’t say anything to anyone?”

“She didn’t mention it, no.” Gran gives Matt another long, careful look. Then she says, “Well. We needed more people around here with a brain. Do you cook?”

Matt blinks a few times behind his glasses. “I can, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Not asking if you _can_. Anyone can. I’m asking if you _do_. She—” and Gran pokes Darcy so hard in the ribs that she yelps “—is more than likely going to be tugged into some wedding project in the next twenty minutes, and I don’t have time to manage the stroganoff once it’s on the stove. You didn’t bring home a boy who doesn’t know one end of a whisk from the other, did you?”

Matt’s lips twitch, and to Darcy’s very great surprise, he reaches out and hooks his fingers into her collar. The hair on the back of her neck stands on end. “I dunno,” he says. “Did you?”

“Oh, God, no. No ganging up on me. Don’t you dare.” She yanks hard on his sleeve, and then looks back at Gran. “Do your worst to him, Gran, he’s been sassy all day and needs to get knocked down a peg.”

“I won’t do that, Renee will, once she’s recovered from her drunken stupor.” Still, Gran looks pleased. “I’ll set things up. Go and find Theresa.”

Darcy bites her lip to keep from smiling. Then, because Gran is still watching her, she turns, and tugs Matt down, putting her lips close to his ear. “You good?”

“I’m good.” He turns, and her whole body prickles when he sets his mouth to the soft spot just beneath her cheekbone. “I think if you don’t go someone will probably end up dead.”

“Might be you,” she says. The front door opens, and there’s a flash of bleached blonde out of the corner of her eye. Lorna. She hesitates, presses a kiss to Matt’s cheek in apology, and flees before her mother realizes she’s in the kitchen.

She really ought to feel bad for ditching him, she thinks, but at the same time she definitely could have left him with someone worse. Gran might ask probing questions, but at least she’s not going to be an outright asshole. Lorna will just ignore him—she doesn’t know who he is, ergo, to Lorna, he’s just another invader in her house. Besides, she’s pretty sure (once an hour is out) that if she hadn’t gone to mediate between Tess and Kitty there would have been a matricide, and Kitty would have spent the two nights before her wedding in police lock-up. It would have completely destroyed her reasons for coming out here in the first place, which, no bueno for everyone involved. No—Matt’s safe with Gran for an hour.

An hour turns to two and a half. Two of Kitty’s friends (“twins,” Billy says, and suddenly Aunt Tess freaking out about bedrooms makes total sense) show up at about six o’clock, and there’s a promise of two more friends (“he means a friend and a _fiancé_ ,” Tommy says, staring pointedly at Billy and then making a rude gesture with his fingers) appearing out of the woodwork once they hit Chicago. Tommy and Billy are flying solo for winter break, though, since their family is in Sokovia for the holidays. Kitty invited them to join the Lewis-Pryde insanity so they weren’t being pathetic rattling around alone in their apartment near Culver. The twins make the house noisier, sure, but Tommy at least seems to get along with Zeke (“which is only to be expected, considering he’s about as mature,” Billy says, once Tommy is well out of hearing range) and that makes life easier on everyone.

So it’s not until nearly six that Darcy manages to detach herself from Kitty, Billy, and Tess (Tommy having vanished to toss Zeke around like a football), and track down Matt. He’s sitting in relative silence in the living room, squashing himself into the corner of one of the couches so he doesn’t accidentally kick Grand’s chair. Grand’s asleep. Darcy picks her way around, and says, “Hey.”

“Hey.” He doesn’t jump. Matt reaches out, and hooks both hands into the pocket of her hoodie. It’s unconscious, she thinks. She still nearly asks what he’s doing before Renee curses loudly in the kitchen, and she remembers. “How’d it go?”

“Fine. I kept Kitty from killing people.” She looks at Grand again. The light of the TV is making strange reflections on his glasses. When her kneecaps knock into Matt’s, he shifts his legs apart and tugs her closer to the couch. “Did Gran give you the shovel talk?”

“Actually, no. She asked if I was the same Matt you talked about in your emails, and about what we do in the city, but other than that she didn’t say much about it at all.” He looks smug, the bastard. It’s kind of killed by the smear of paprika on his cheek, but he definitely looks smug. “You mentioned us in your emails home?”

“Of course I mentioned you, dipshit, what was I supposed to do? Make up friends that _weren’t_ crazy law students that want to save the world?” She pushes at his shoulder with two fingers. “That’d be ridiculous.”

“Shut up.” He links his hands together inside her hoodie pocket, tips his head at her. “I just didn’t know you’d told her about either of us.”

“Well.” She’s kind of glad he can’t see how she’s blushing at the moment. Which is stupid, because there’s nothing to blush about. She told her grandmother about her friends. How is that blushworthy? “I did. You have something on your face, y’know.”

“Sure I do.” He doesn’t move. “You heard anything from Foggy yet?”

“No. I called him after we landed, but he didn’t pick up.” And there aren’t any texts when she checks her cell phone, either. “He might be out with Marci. Or in with Marci. Or, y’know. _In_ with Marci.”

“Please don’t say that ever again,” Matt says, and Darcy snorts. She swipes a text out to Foggy— _call when you see this, tell Marci/your family/Marci and your family I said hi_ —and shoves her phone back into her jeans pocket. “There are a few reasons I’m glad we don’t room together anymore, and Marci is one of them.”

“Such a mature adult,” she says, and scrubs the paprika off his cheek. There’s still a streak of orange-red left behind. Darcy shakes her sleeve over her hand, and wipes it away again, smearing it on the cloth. “I happen to like Marci. Or I would like her more if she quit being so pedantic.”

“I don’t not like her, she just—” He considers for a moment. Matt draws his hands out of her hoodie, and then puts his palms to her waist. She’s kind of draped in Matt Murdock at the moment, and not gonna lie, it’s pretty awesome. “There was this cat in my neighborhood when I was a kid. Big Persian. Persian? The long-haired ones with the squashed faces.”

“Persians, yeah.”

“Okay. My dad used to call it Lucifer. Like in the Disney movie? The little bastard used to hide in rain gutters or under cars and attack people when they weren’t expecting it. Jumped off a fire escape onto my dad’s head, once. Gave him this scar behind his ear that lasted for years. When I hear Marci, that’s what I think of.”

“A crazy feral Persian?” Bubbles pop in her chest, up into her mouth. She’s pretty sure he can hear the way he’s grinning, because Matt’s lips curve up, and he presses his fingers into the fabric of her sweatshirt. “You hear Marci and you think of a crazy feral cat named Lucifer?”

“Close second to velociraptor,” he says. “And it wasn’t feral, it was my neighbor’s pet. She _refused_ to believe people when they told her about what it would do. And it was a cat, so nobody ever caught it on film.”

“What’d your dad do?”

“Nothing. He had the shit kicked out of him in a match the next night so it didn’t really matter anyway. Just one more scratch.”

When she looks down at him again, Matt has that look on his face that’s not—it’s not hollow, exactly, but there’s an emptiness to it that makes her think of fresh cracks in asphalt, or choppy water, or an eggshell after the yolk and white have been drained. Like something’s being carved out of him. She’s never quite figured out what caused it, not until this moment. Darcy hesitates, and then braces a hand to his hair, scraping her nails against his scalp. Matt lets out a little breath, and shuts his eyes behind the glasses. The echo of old grief hangs in the air, stinging at her nose like campfire smoke.

“I wish I could have met your dad,” she says. It’s the only thing she can think to say. And it’s true—she does wish she could have known Jack Murdock, if only because of how Matt talks about him. Not like a hero, or like a monster, either. Like a human being. Like someone who did his damnedest to get a better life for his child. She really, really wishes she could have known a person like that. “He sounds like a badass.”

Matt chokes a little, half-smiling. “He would have really liked you. And Foggy. I think. But—but you two would have—I don’t know. Clicked, I guess.”

She feathers her fingertips along the hair at the nape of his neck. Her throat hurts, a little. “That’s nice to hear.”

“It’s why I go to St. Patrick’s,” he says, all of a sudden. He keeps his voice low and his hands on her hips, like he’s telling her a secret. “For midnight mass, I mean. There are other churches I could use, closer to Columbia, or the apartment, but we used to go on Christmas Eve. I remember—I dunno. Usually you had to drag him kicking and screaming into church, but with Christmas, it was different. At least until the accident.”

Darcy glances up at the door into the hall, at Grand. Grand’s still asleep, she thinks, or faking very well. No one’s really paying attention. “Hey.” She pushes hair away from his forehead, sets her fingers to his jaw. “Can I hug you?”

“You’re actually asking?” Matt says, which is enough of an answer, at least for her. Darcy drops down onto his knee, scooting in just far enough that she can wind her arms around his ribs without squashing him. Air catches in his throat. Matt breathes, in and out, and then very delicately he curves one arm around her waist. This, at least, is familiar. Hugging Matt is familiar and regular and clockwork-normal. She hides her face in his shirt.  

“You never told me that before,” she says. She thinks his eyes might be damp. “If you’d said something, I wouldn’t have—”

“That’s why I didn’t say anything.” He wavers, just for a second. When he clears his throat, it buzzes through her ribcage and into her chest. “I didn’t—I don’t mind. I wanted to come. I wouldn’t have agreed if I weren’t all right with it.”

Darcy bites her tongue. “Still.”

“I’ll go to church when we get back to the city. It’s not that big of a deal. And like I said, on a normal day you’d had to have dragged him, so I don’t think he’d have cared too much.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Her phone buzzes in her back pocket. _Jen: Land okay?_ She shifts around, leaves her head on his shoulder as she types out a _yes, all well, call Gran plz_ with both thumbs. She’s still sitting there (Matt’s playing with the ends of her hair) when Kitty raps on the doorframe. “Hey there, kids,” she says, “I think Gran’s gonna kill people if you don’t get your tardy butts into the dining room. Everyone else is making their way downstairs.”

Matt doesn’t freeze, not the way he had in the airport. He does go still, though, and his lungs do that funny catching thing again, like he’s forgotten how to breathe. “One minute,” Darcy says, and Kitty drops her a wink before disappearing back into the hallway. Darcy taps her thumbnail against her phone case, and then sighs. “She could have yelled,” she tells Matt, getting to her feet again. “I learned the yelling thing from Gran. She’s _good_ at the yelling thing. Now Kitty’s never gonna shut up about this.”

“That was the point, I thought,” says Matt.

“Well, yeah, but—” She stops. “Whatever. C’mon, if we don’t get to the table Aunt Renee will have grabbed all the good food and left the rest of us scraps like they do in _Oliver!_.”

“Which, clearly, is a travesty,” Matt says, his mouth crooked, but he lets her tow him along anyway.

.

.

.

Foggy finally calls her back at about ten, while Darcy’s knee-deep in cupcakes and trying hard not to make herself sick on the icing. Lorna (thank fuck) seems to have picked the _ignore Darcy’s existence and hope she goes away as quickly as possible_ route, which is far preferable to the _make Darcy feel like shit_ route; she’d spent the whole time at the dinner table talking to Renee and getting progressively louder the more wine she’d downed. They’re still drinking, Darcy’s pretty sure, just out in the living room where the door is shut so she can’t hear either of them any longer. Still, there are a few hours left in the day, and there’s a sense creeping along the back of her neck that someone’s dangled a boot over her head, waiting for it to drop.

Thus, cupcakes.

When her phone buzzes in her jeans pocket, Darcy scoots over to Matt, and knocks into him with her hip. “Phone, phone. I think it’s Foggy. Back right pocket.”

“I thought you said no ass-grabbing,” Matt says, but he slips her phone out of her pocket anyway. Darcy sticks her tongue out at him, and hits accept with the tip of her pinky finger. “Foggy?”

“Matt?” He sounds oddly tinny through the tiny speaker. “Wait, I thought I hit three. Did I hit two?”

“Hey, Foggy.” She gropes for a towel, and then turns the phone on speaker. “Sorry—I’m baking, I had Matt answer. You’re on speaker, just FYI, so don’t like…wax poetic about your secret, burning love for me or something.”

“Pretty sure that’s not _my_ job,” says Foggy, and Matt, sipping on his coffee, chokes for some reason. Darcy dumps more powdered sugar into the bowl she’s using for icing. “But thanks for the update. I don’t think I could have survived not knowing that for one more day.”

Darcy snorts. “You’re happy. What’s up?”

“I am a fucking king, that’s what’s up.” Foggy sounds very pleased with himself, which is only to be expected post-finals and post-Marci. “Sorry, didn’t see you’d called until now. I assume you are, in fact, still alive, since there was no news about a plane crash. I didn’t see anything about anyone committing mass murder in Atlanta, either, so if you _are_ speaking to me from a jail cell, kindly do not inform me. It’ll burst my bubble.” He stops. “Wait, _you’re_ baking?”

“Shut up,” Darcy says, and scrapes mix out of the bottom of the bowl. “It was boxed, okay? I can’t poison a box of cake mix.”

“Don’t eat anything that came from her hands, Matt,” says Foggy. Judging by the way Matt ducks his head, he’s trying really hard not to laugh. “Seriously, though. Ask me why I have a bubble.”

“After you make fun of my cake mix? Please. Out of the pair of us, who set the stove on fire in sophomore year trying to make scrambled eggs?”

“Bite me, Darcy. Matt, c’mon, man. Help me out here.”

“She has a point, Foggy.”

“You’re dead to me,” says Foggy, flatly.

“Foggy, the whole dorm had to evacuate. It was November and it was raining and I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually warmed up again since, so no, I’m never letting go of it. I’m pretty sure the rest of Carman Hall won’t either.”

Foggy makes the _oh my fucking god I hate you_ noise, and on the other end of the line, there’s a burble of words that Darcy can’t quite make out. She thinks it might have been one of Foggy’s sisters. “Seriously, guys. One of you ask.”

Darcy turns on the oven. “I don’t know. Matt, can you hear anything over the sound of hypocrisy?”

Matt, still choking a little, turns the phone so the speaker’s facing him. “Why do you have a bubble?”

“I don’t even know if I should tell you, anymore, Sydney. You mocked the bubble. Now who has any idea if you’re actually worthy of knowing the truth?”

 _Sydney?_ Darcy thinks, but there’s no chance for her to ask. Matt’s still laughing, so it must not be anything too important. “For Christ’s sake, Foggy—”

“Keep your underwear on, kid, I’m getting there.” Foggy takes a huge breath. “So, you know how my mom wanted me to be a butcher?”

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Darcy shouts, and on the other end of the line, Foggy cackles. It takes a few minutes (and Kitty poking her head in to see what the fuck is going on) before everyone settles down again, Matt still pink from laughing too hard. Darcy shoves her first batch of cupcakes into the oven, and turns back to the icing. “Seriously, Foggy, if you don’t just say what your goddamn bubble is about I’m just gonna hang up and turn off my phone until we’re in the Chicago airport on the way back to the city—”

“Like you’d be able to go without hearing my voice for that long, Lizzie Bennet.” Apparently, Foggy’s been reading classical literature again. “Or without Twitter, actually, it’d be harder for you to ditch Twitter. But I gather your point.” He takes a deep breath. “I finished all my internship applications as of two minutes ago. Loathe me if you dare.”

“Foggy.” Matt taps his fingers against the counter. “It’s the day before Christmas Eve, and you’re working on internship applications?”

“This coming from you? Please. Besides, you think my sisters would have let me get away with working on them tomorrow? Obviously you forgot how Monny gets about Christmas. I think if she could actually attach a glowing red nose to my face without invasive plastic surgery, she would do it.”

“You would make an adorable Rudolph,” Darcy says. She shakes some food coloring into the icing, and keeps stirring. “Now we just have to figure out if you can fly.”

“Faith, trust, and pixie dust, Lewis. The whole clan swears by it.” Foggy preens audibly for a moment or two. “So, how’s the old homestead?”

“I decline to answer the question,” says Darcy. She sticks her finger into the icing. “Matt?”

“Fine,” says Matt, which is obviously what Matt was going to say, because Matt wouldn’t risk saying anything else while actually, you know, in said old homestead. “Everyone asks a lot of questions.”

“So it’s like a house full of Darcys?”

“That’s—not exactly how I would put it, no.”

Foggy’s quiet for a second. Then: “Hey, Matt, take me off speaker.”

Darcy blinks. “Something you wanna say, Nelson?”

“I just—I need to ask Matt something. Take me off speaker?”

Darcy takes Foggy off speaker. She also smears her fingerful of icing on Matt’s cheek, because she can, and because it makes his nose scrunch the same way it did in the airport this morning. It’s still absurdly adorable. Matt swipes at the icing with his thumb, absently, and listens in silence to whatever Foggy has to say. It only takes a minute or two. Then he hangs up, and slips her phone into his pocket.

“What was that about?” Darcy says, and sticks her finger back into the icing bowl. She should, technically, be putting it in the fridge. Eating it is more fun, though. “You guys keeping secrets?”

“Not—exactly.” He has his thinking face on, mouth half up, half down. Darcy looks down at the bowl, and then draws a line down the bone of his jaw with an icing-laden finger. Matt blinks very fast behind his glasses, and then huffs a laugh through his nose. “What’s that for?”

“Fun.” She boosts herself up onto the counter, and settles the bowl of icing in her lap. “The cupcakes have to, you know, cook before I can do anything, and Gran always has like…a million pounds of powdered sugar. If we waste it all on your stupid face, then I can make more. What did Foggy have to ask you?”

“Nothing,” Matt says, and touches his fingertips to her knee, shifting his hand until he finds the bowl. When he dabs a bit of icing onto her forehead, Darcy has to fight really hard not to beam at him. “Just a question.”

“So why do you look like London Bridge is falling down?”

“I don’t have an answer yet.”

“That,” she says, and wipes more icing on his nose, “is ridiculously vague.”

“Kind of the point,” Matt says. “If your grandmother comes in here and asks why there’s icing everywhere, I’m going to blame you.”

“I feel so betrayed,” Darcy says, as dry as she can manage when Matt has a smear of blue icing across his cheekbone. There are little flecks of it on his glasses. “I may never forgive you.”

“Uh-huh,” Matt says. He licks icing off of his finger. Darcy stares very hard at the ceiling, because _Christ_ , there are some things that should be illegal, and that’s—that’s kind of one of them. She’s been over the dumb stomach floppiness when it comes to Matt smiling. She’s been over that for ages. Just—he just needs to stop making things difficult. “I’ll try to pull myself back together.”

“You’re such a liar.” Darcy pushes at him with one hand. Matt rocks back and forth on his feet, keeping his balance. “This may, possibly, be the quietest icing fight I have ever participated in.”

“Personally, I don’t want to attract the attention of your aunts,” Matt says. He scoops more icing out of the bowl, and presses it to her cheek. “I find them intimidating.”

“Loser.”

“Commonsensical,” he says. Darcy rolls her eyes.

“Please. Renee can occasionally be the devil incarnate, sure, but Tess is like…six inches shorter than you are and dyes her hair purple every other month. She’s a kitten made of sunshine and rainbows.”

“She threatened to pull someone’s intestines out through their eye sockets this morning over a botched flower delivery.”

“Point.” Darcy dabs a shred of icing to the side of his nose. “So. Happy holidays. This is my family. We’re nuts.”

“Merry Christmas,” Matt says, pointedly, and she snorts.

“Goy.”

“Rude.”

“Whatever.”  

“You two are grotesque,” says Kitty from the doorway. Darcy wipes the last bit of icing on her hand onto Matt’s cheek (she gets a little too close to his mouth, close enough that her thumb brushes over his lip, and it’s an accident, she swears, but she still rubs her fingers together afterwards because she just can’t help it) and slides off the counter. She hadn’t realized that Matt had boxed her in until right this moment, when she has to duck under his arm to get to the sink. “Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s adorable, albeit slightly sickening.”

“Fuck off, Kit-Kat,” says Darcy, and turns on the water as hot as she can get it. “Like you and Piotr weren’t gross.”

“Kit-Kat.” Piotr looms up out of the dark like some kind of Disney beast. His pajama pants are about two inches too short for him, poor guy. “Haven’t heard that one before.”

“That’s because Darcy’s the only one who’s stupid enough to call me that,” says Kitty. Darcy wipes her hands on the dishtowel, and starts picking at the icing dotting her forehead.

“Because you know if we get into a fight I’ll win, _Kit-Kat_.”

“Whatever.” Kitty props her hands on her hips. “You keep going down that road and I’ll have to drag Princess Sparkleberry out from her deep dark grave.”

“Imaginary friend,” Darcy says, before Matt can ask. “I was six and she was a unicorn. There, she’s dug up and buried again. Well done, Kit-Kat.”

“Not even close.”  

“Sparkleberry,” says Piotr, and turns away very quickly. His shoulders are shaking. Darcy labels Piotr as good people, and bounces back up onto the counter. “Wasn’t that from My Little Pony?”

“It is possible I may have violated copyright law as a child through the crafting of imaginary unicorns, yes,” says Darcy, and Matt snorts. “You guys going to bed?”

“I go running at five, so yeah, I’m going to bed.” Kitty waggles her eyebrows. “You wanna come with us tomorrow? You might even keep your feet this time.”

“Fuck you and fuck your mother,” says Darcy. Kitty laughs. “I’m fine with my cupcakes and my icing and all of the sugary goodness. Quit shaming, Kitty.”

“If I don’t go running I’m gonna get my ass kicked the next time I go into the gym. This is more me not wanting to fall off the treadmill than anything else.”

“You are tiny, but mighty, and can eat your weight in cupcakes just like the rest of us.”

“Damn straight.” Kitty waggles her fingers. “Good night.”

“Night, Kitty.”

“Nice to meet you, again,” says Kitty, and Matt (who’d just been listening, palms braced against the edge of the counter, elbow knocking into her ribs) blinks behind his glasses. “Hopefully we haven’t scared you off.”

“It’d take more than this,” Matt says, and Darcy can’t help the smile that’s yanking at her mouth. She ducks her head and lets her hair fall forward to hide it, but she presses her knee into Matt’s side in a quiet thank you. He leans back into it. When she peeks at him out of the corner of her eye, there’s icing in his ear. “Trust me.”

Kitty’s eyebrows bounce. She gives Darcy a double thumbs’ up. “Leave some of those for me,” she says.

“No promises.”

With that, Kitty’s gone. Piotr waffles by the door for a moment—Darcy wonders if they’re always like this, the Russian giant being tugged around by the tiny Southern Jew; the image is ridiculously adorable—and then nods to both of them before traipsing after her up the stairs. In the living room, someone—Darcy’s pretty sure it’s Renee—yelps with laughter.

“She likes you.” Darcy drops off the counter again to collect more powdered sugar. Matt looks pleased, the tips of his ears going red.

“She’s lovely.”

“She’s a sarcastic little shit that needs to get smacked upside the head,” says Darcy, but she’s smiling. “But yeah, she’s kind of great. I love her a lot.”

He hums. “I can tell.”

She throws some bowls into the sink, and runs water on them. “She likes you. And Uncle Carmen likes you—he does, don’t look like that, he would have made his opinion known otherwise—which means Tess will like you as soon as she stops running around like a headless chicken. And if Gran let you in her kitchen, that means she likes you, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Darcy hands him the whisk and the icing bowl. “Mix that? I’m gonna wash things.”

“Okay.”

She’s in the shower and frothing shampoo over her hair when she realizes how fucking screwed she is. They all like him. It’s hard not to like Matt when he’s being charming, which—well, she hasn’t actually seen him interacting with her family too much beyond Kitty and Gran, but he’s definitely been trying to be charming. Which is good, in a lot of ways, because it means there won’t be a cold war about Darcy’s choice in (fake) boyfriends, but _fuck._ They all like him, Gran and Kitty and Carmen and Tess, and if it comes out that they’re not actually dating she’s going to get so much shit for it. God, they’re going to expect to hear about him from now on. She’s going to have to come up with a fake breakup for her fake boyfriend that doesn’t mean she needs to stop talking about Matt entirely. _Shit. This may have been a bad idea._

She turns the shower on very cold, and shrieks a little when the water stabs her in the stomach.

It’s midnight by the time Matt gets back from the bathroom, his hair still damp and his glasses slipping down his nose. Darcy’s left the sleeping bag abandoned on the floor at the end of the bed, and she’s curled up with her laptop and her earbuds, trying to catch up on her weekly regimen of _The West Wing._ He hesitates, and then shuts the door carefully behind him.

“You still have icing in your eyebrow,” Darcy says, and he makes the _don’t give me that bullshit_ face, forehead wrinkling and his mouth twitching up at the corners like he’s trying not to laugh. “It’s very blue.”

“I do not.”

“No, you don’t, but you thought you did for a second, didn’t you?” She pauses, and tugs her headphones out of her ears. “Night of the first day. Only seventy-two hours remain.”

“Glad you came?”

“Jury’s out on that one.” She glances at the door, and then at Matt again. “So they left a sleeping bag in here expecting Jen to show up, but my aunt is gonna think it’s weird if you use it. Just FYI.”

“I’d rather your aunts not kill me.”

“You think my aunts would kill you for sleeping in the same bed as me when we’re supposed to be dating?” Darcy scoffs. “Seriously, they’re expecting it, more than likely. Get in the damn bed.”

“Darcy—”

“Just get in bed,” says Darcy, and all of a sudden she’s so exhausted that her voice pops. “It’s not like—we’ve slept in the same bed before, right? And I just—please.”

Matt stills. Then, very slowly, he touches his hand to the comforter, draws a line to the free pillow. His shoulder knocks into hers before he settles on his side, his glasses left behind on the bedside table, and Darcy (who’s sitting braced with her back against the wall, knees up to hold her computer properly) taps an earbud to his cheek. “ _West Wing_?”

“I’m good.”

“Loser.” She shuts her computer (well, mostly), and sets it aside, on top of one of the dumb throw pillows that Gran likes to sprinkle everywhere. “I’m turning off the light, okay?”

“Such a tragedy.”

“Ah, sarcasm, the grumpy man’s wit.” She leans over him, and tugs on the cord. When she presses her back to the wall, Matt’s smiling a little. “You doing okay there?”

“This bed is tiny.”

“Because I used it when I was six. It’s a twin, you monster, deal with it for two days.” She’s tempted to flick his nose, but she’s probably crossed the line one too many times today already. Darcy turns down the brightness on her laptop. “They’re probably going to scream each other awake, fair warning.”

“Duly noted.” Matt shifts, resettles his head against the pillow. His hand is curled against the mattress. “Is there anything that you need to do tomorrow?”

“Other than hide from my mother as if she’s a bubonic plague victim? Probably cleaning and prepping for Chicago. Shouldn’t be too hard.” She dusts her hand over his hair before pinning her fingers underneath her computer. “Gloves are off where you’re concerned, though. They’re gonna try and pick your brain every chance they get, now.”

“It’ll be good practice for cross-examination.”

“Goober. Just—we need to keep our stories straight, that’s all. Did you ask me out or did I ask you out?”

“It couldn’t have been a mutual decision?”

“Well, it could have been, but let’s face it, it’s more likely I asked you.”

His eyebrows squish together. Matt tips his head up. “Why do you say that?”

“Matt, honey, you’re smooth as hell when you don’t think about it, but you overthink _everything._ If there really was something going on, then you’d have spent so long going over the pros and cons that you wouldn’t have said anything at all.”

Matt’s quiet. He tugs at the hem of the pillowcase. “Probably.”

“Told you.” Darcy clears her throat, and looks out the window. It started to rain about an hour ago, and the glass is smeared and blurred. “So. I asked you out for coffee or something like…let’s say four months ago? I think that’s long enough. Kitty will probably be the one to ask, so just…I dunno. Be charming.”

“I thought that was the natural byproduct of my existence.”

“Clearly Gran did not deflate you of sass the way she was supposed to.”

Matt huffs through his nose. “You’re still a brat.”

“And you’re stuck with me, fuzzball.” Darcy taps two fingers to the edge of her computer. “Go to sleep.”

“Bossy.”

“You know it.”

“Sure.” He shuts his eyes, still smiling. “Good night.”

“G’night, Matt,” Darcy says. By the time she’s finished her episode of _The West Wing,_ he’s out, still and quiet with his fingers still curled up beneath the pillow. She settles her computer on the floor at the end of the bed, and then lies flat, staring at the ceiling. Most of the glow-in-the-dark stars are still there, despite a probably monumental effort on Gran’s part. She can sketch out Taurus over the closet door.

It takes a few minutes before she realizes that she’s matched her breathing to his, without thinking about it, in and out in a steady rhythm. She’s slept in Matt’s bed before, obviously, and she’s slept _with_ Matt in Matt’s bed before (she’s fallen asleep there a few times while he was sick, or while he was reading and she was watching a movie, or something) but this is her old bed in her old house, the room she grew up in, and Matt’s in it. It’s going to be very hard to not think about that, when this is all over. Darcy rolls onto her side, putting her back to him so she can’t see his face.

It doesn’t take her an hour to fall asleep, but it does take a while. She blames it on the streetlamps outside.

.

.

.

They _do_ scream each other awake. More specifically, Zeke shrieks like a banshee to get his mother’s attention, and Darcy crams the pillow over her head and makes upset noises until someone shuts him up. Matt looks very put out about the whole thing, keeping his eyes squeezed shut and burying himself underneath the comforter in an effort to get away from the sound. “ _Christ._ ”

“Told you.” She whacks at him with a pillow (Matt chokes) and then slides down to the end of the bed, grabbing her toothbrush. “They’re not gonna stop, either.”

“What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty, and Renee and Mom are gonna be hungover as shit, so I’d get downstairs before they claim the coffee as the spoils of war.”

“Gwugh,” says Matt, and hides under the covers again. Darcy bites her tongue to keep from laughing, and shuts the door behind her, scooping Zeke up and dangling him over her shoulder to get him to shut his face.

Zeke, apparently, had not been able to fall asleep at all. Darcy chivvies Matt out of the bed, and puts Zeke in her room (“it’s quieter in here,” she says, and Zeke refuses to let go of her hand until he’s passed out like a starfish over the pillows) so it’s past eight by the time she changes clothes and clatters downstairs to stake out a claim on the coffee machine. Renee’s nowhere to be seen, and Gran’s already set up Grand in the living room and gone out to do her gardening, so Darcy’s alone in the kitchen when Lorna follows her in.

“Oh,” says Lorna, and stops on the threshold. Darcy nearly fumbles her bag of coffee filters. _You’re twenty-four_ , she thinks, and fights the urge to tug her hat down further over her ears. _You’re a fucking adult, you can deal with her for five minutes._ “I was wondering where you were.”

“Good morning to you, too, Mom,” Darcy says, and fits the filter into the coffee machine. It’s always so weird looking at her mother. Even with the bleached hair and the blue eyes, it’s more than a little like looking in a mirror. The main difference is the mouth, really. Darcy’s pretty sure she has her dad’s mouth, or that it comes from her dad’s side, anyway. Lorna’s is small, and constantly pursed, like she’s eating lemon rind. “I thought you’d sleep for another hour or two.”

“Damn kid woke me up.” Lorna drops down into a kitchen chair, and watches her. “So we’re back to you calling me mom? I thought you stopped doing that.”

 _And here’s the other shoe, dropping right on my head. I knew it was around here somewhere._ “You’re my mother. Am I supposed to pretend you’re not?”

“You only stop pretending when you want something.”

Darcy’s hands go still on the coffee machine. Then she heads to the fridge, and grabs the beans. “I don’t want anything from you, Mom.”

“Uh-huh,” says Lorna, and leans back in her chair. The skin under her eyes looks bruised. “Fascinating. Are you supposed to look like a rainbow?”

“I’m wearing clothes.” She fills the machine with water, and hits the brew button. “Are you supposed to look like you just rolled out from under a bush?”

Lorna puffs up, just for a second. She lets air out of her nose. “Kitty-cat bites,” Lorna says. “Not that you’re interested, but yesterday was the anniversary of Renee and Marina’s divorce. I was up late.”

 _No, that was last week,_ Darcy nearly says, but she holds her tongue. Lorna fiddles with one of her bracelets. “I didn’t see Jennifer, either, come to think of it. Was she too stuck-up to come out and see her cousin getting married?”

“Jen has a case to prosecute, and it’s the first time she’s lead for the DA. She kind of has a lot on her plate.” Her hands are shaking a little. “Back off of Jen, Mom.”

“Am I supposed to like her just because you live with her?” Lorna pulls a box of cigarettes from the pocket of her sweatshirt, lights one. Darcy wrinkles her nose. “Oh, get off your high horse, I know you smoke.”

“Only during finals. And definitely not in Gran’s house.”

“Christ, you’re patronizing. Who the hell made you so patronizing?” Lorna blows a smoke ring up towards the ceiling. She might still be a little drunk, Darcy thinks. She’s languid, somehow, not choppy like she is when she’s sober. So, yeah. Probably still drunk. “Didn’t get it from me, that’s for sure.”

There’s a tapping sound from the doorway. Matt stands with his hand on the frame, his mouth twisting so faintly that she’s pretty sure she’s the only one who would be able to see it. Lorna taps her cigarette ash into an empty coffee mug, and leans back in her chair. “I don’t know you. Are you one of Kitty’s gay twins?”

“Mom, this is Matt.” She takes a breath. “Matt, this is my mother, Lorna.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Matt. He doesn’t offer his hand. Lorna looks him up and down, and then glances over at Darcy with a look on her face that Darcy can’t quite describe. It’s as if she’s scented blood in the water, or someone’s thrown wine in her face, or both at once.

“Not a dyke after all, then,” she says, and Matt’s eyebrows snap together so fast that she’s surprised she doesn’t hear them crash. Darcy clears her throat, and pushes away from the kitchen counter.

“Jesus, Mom.” The coffee’s only going to be a few minutes, but she’s not sure she can stand being here that long. “Can you just—not do this this morning, please?”

“Honey, you’re in my house for the first time in four years. I’ll do what I like.” She exhales a cloud of smoke. “I thought Jennifer had you convinced you were some kind of self-reproducing amoeba like she is. Personally, I just think she’s a frigid little bitch, but that’s neither here nor there—”

“ _Don’t_ , Mom,” Darcy says, and clenches her hands into fists. “I told you, back off of Jen.”

“Or you’ll, what, yell at me? You already left the rest of us in the dust, I don’t think you can do anything worse.”

Matt’s opening his mouth when she gets to him, puts a hand to his chest. “Don’t,” she says. “She’s drunk, it’s okay. Can we just—I’m gonna go outside.”

“How does this not surprise me?” Lorna looks pleased, lips curling up, and _Christ_ , she hates how much she resembles her mother. “You always did run off when people were honest with you.”

Matt goes so tense and coiling under her hand that she’s surprised he isn’t actually hissing. There are shadows hanging in his face, a raw kind of fury that she’s only seen once or twice, when someone’s been cruel, or someone’s managed to get away with something. She’d seen it when that bastard in freshman year had been giving Foggy shit, and she’d seen it when a guy in her Torts class hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer, but this is darker. It’s settled into him like scars and scrapes and bones. “I left my cane upstairs,” he says, and Jesus, his voice. She’s not sure if she’s shaking or shivering. “Can you get it?”

“Matt, seriously, it’s not—”

“Please,” he says. He doesn’t move. His knuckles are shining white through the skin of his hand. “Just—please.”

She’s definitely shaking. Darcy curls her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. Matt dips his head down, and says very softly, “Please, Darcy, just—two minutes.”

“I don’t need you to fight this for me.”

“I’m not.” He cups the back of her neck with his free hand, just for a second or two. “I’ll meet you outside, all right?”

She can’t help it. She presses her palm to the center of his chest, takes a breath. When she says, “Two minutes,” her voice cracks a little. Matt nods, and then lets her slip away from him towards the stairs.

She doesn’t go get the cane. Of course she doesn’t. Darcy sits at the top of the stairs, the cord of her headphones tangled in between her fingers. There’s a perfect sound tunnel from the kitchen to the landing, and she can hear every word they’re saying. “—know if she paid you to come out with her or if you’re doing it as a favor for your boyfriend or whatever, but honestly, what the hell gives you the right—”

“Shut up,” Matt says. He’s so rough she almost doesn’t recognize him, verging on vicious. “I’m trying to think of a reason to not get her back on a plane to the city right now, even with the wedding. You’re not making a very good case.”

“Christ, you’re as bad as she is.” The accent’s coming out, drawling. Darcy leans her shoulder into the railings, shuts her eyes. “Stuck-up city kids who have no idea how hard life is going to wind up biting them in the ass. You have no fucking clue—”

“I know more than you think,” says Matt. “I know you’re a drunk.” Lorna makes a noise like she’s been slapped, and starts to curse, but Matt lifts his voice just a bit and talks over her. “I know you’ve been sick for a long time. Probably since before she was born. I know she used to be scared of you coming home when she was a kid. I know that the thing she’s most terrified of on the planet is turning into you.”

“You—”

“Let me be very clear.” She has to strain to hear him, now, he’s speaking so softly, but Lorna, Jesus. For some reason her mom’s gone silent. “She loves you. I don’t know why, but she does. I don’t know what it’s like to live your life, either, to be so buried under the weight of your own mind that you can’t get back up. That’s not my business. Your relationship with your daughter isn’t my business. What she wants to do, that’s her decision. But if you ever—if you _ever_ talk to her like that again, then I will make it my business. Because she’s—” Matt stops. She can almost see him take a breath. “She’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life. And if she asked me to, I would make sure that she never has to see you, or speak to you, or even hear your voice, ever again. It would be my absolute pleasure.”

The silence rings out like shattered crystal. A chair scrapes. A few heartbeats later, the back door slams so hard that it rattles on its hinges. Her mother, she thinks. Her lungs are burning. Darcy gets to her feet, and skips over the creaky step to go find Matt’s cane.

Matt’s waiting just outside the front door, hands in his pockets, facing the little breeze that’s whipping down the road. When she shuts the door behind her, he turns. “Darcy—”

“Don’t.” It breaks in her mouth. “Just—not yet, okay? I want to walk.”

His eyes go shadowed. Matt nods, and when she presses the cane into his hand, he squeezes her fingers for just a second before letting go. “Okay.”

“There’s an IHOP like…ten blocks north of here.” Her face feels wet. “Um. If you want.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Neither am I.” She rocks back and forth on her feet, and then finds his hand, hooks it into her elbow. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

It’s early morning on Christmas Eve, which means the park is empty when they finally stop walking. Half an hour from her grandmother’s house, Darcy thinks. She presses the chain of one of the swings into Matt’s hand, and then drops down hard into the other, pushing back and forth with the ball of her foot. He follows the chain up, and then down again, until a look of _ah_ flickers across his face. “A playground?”

“My mom and I moved in with my grandmother when I was about two, and they argued all the time,” she says. “Then Gran married Sam when I was seven, and people argued even more. I used to come out here when things were getting too loud, or after school, or when I didn’t want to go home. There weren’t a lot of kids in this neighborhood back then, so usually I had the place to myself.” She sounds choked, like she’s trying not to cry. Which is _stupid_ , because she’s told herself she’s not going to cry. She’s too used to her mother to cry at something like this. “The swings were my buddies. So, makes sense for me to introduce you to them.”

His mouth quirks a little. Matt pushes at the chain, and stays upright. The sand’s still wet, and it sticks to the bottom of her shoe when she pushes off.

“Did you mean what you said?” Darcy swallows. “About taking me back to New York?”

Matt hooks his fingers around the chain, and then lets go again. It bumps into his hand. “If I thought you’d let me, I would.”

She can’t speak, for a moment. Darcy digs the toe of her tennis shoe into the sand, going still. “Oh.”

Matt stands there, pushing at the swing, for a good minute. Then he sets his jaw, and reaches out, touching his fingertips to her shoulder. Darcy quakes. “Darcy.”

“I’m okay,” she says. “Just—I’m okay.”

“Hey.” Matt turns his cane between his hands, and then lets it rest against the empty swing, crouching down on the balls of his feet like he’s about to jump off a ledge. Darcy can’t help but look at him, at the expression on his face. He looks like he wants take a knife and flay himself alive. “Does she always do that? Your mother.”

“Usually she doesn’t—I mean. She does, but like…it takes more time. Typically she has to build up a head of steam about something before jumping right into the deep end like that.” Her lungs shake when she takes a deep breath, holding it close. “She’s always a little weird when she’s been dumped. I’m guessing that’s why she was drinking so much last night, her boyfriend must have ditched or something. And she’s always been nasty about Jen and the ace-aro thing, so.”

“Christ,” says Matt, quiet and heartfelt. He presses his lips together for a moment, and then rests his hands to her knees. To keep his balance, maybe. Or to ground her, that’s possible too. It’s weird, the back-and-forth of him being easy and free and touchy with her in front of other people, and then all this hesitation when no one else can see. She knows why, obviously, but the rubber-banding is leaving her dizzy. “Jesus Christ.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“I’d hate to see your definition of bad.”

She tries to match the rhythm of his breathing for a minute or two, just to keep herself from crying.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this.” The words catch. “You came to do me a favor and then my mother decided to pick a fight.”

“I don’t care what your mom says.” Matt folds his hands around her knees. “I shouldn’t have pushed back like that, I’m sorry. It really wasn’t any of my business.”

“Matt, you don’t—usually Gran can get her to back off, and before his stroke Grand would shut her down before she could get started, but nobody’s—” _Nobody’s ever gone that far for me,_ she almost says. Darcy bites her tongue. When she slips her fingers into his, Matt stands, and holds on. “That’s the first time someone’s offered to take me out of it. And—and that means a lot.”

Matt shudders a little. He squeezes her hands. When she pulls, barely enough to even feel it, he steps forward, and lets her hide her face in his stomach, wind her arms around his waist. Matt curls his fingers into her hair, curving, bending into her like he wants to hide her underneath his coat. “If you want to go,” he says, “we can. It wouldn’t make you a coward to do it.”

“I know.” She stops. “I get that she’s sick, and—and when she’s having bad days she can’t actually, y’know. She just stops caring what she says because she stops caring about anything. I _get_ that, I know how she is when she’s like that, but—but Gran told me she’s been going to therapy, and that she’s been getting better, and that was—I thought she’d be a little easier this week, that’s all.”

Matt sighs. “I don’t know your mother, Darcy. I don’t know what she’s like when she’s sober, or when she’s off her medication, or—or what she was like before the depression hit her. I don’t know that. I can’t know that. But I think there’s a line between brushing off what she says and excusing it with her illness, and telling yourself that you should keep coming back to get hurt _because_ she’s sick. Even if it’s only because of the depression, even if she doesn’t mean to, that doesn’t change the fact that you keep getting hurt, and she keeps being the one to do it.”

It feels different to hear it, rather than just think it. Stark and sharp, like a cliff face. It’s like someone’s poured acid into her, or torn something open inside that’s spilling oil down her throat. She tries to breathe in air, and all she tastes is exhaust. “Sometimes I think she does it on purpose,” Darcy says, and she doesn’t think about it, it just slips out, but Matt goes brittle and still to listen. “Sometimes—that’s a horrible thing to say. She’s sick. But just—sometimes I wonder if on good days she uses it as an excuse to—to get away with all the shit she says. And that’s a _horrible_ thing to think, that’s like saying someone’s taking advantage of the fact that they have like…terminal cancer to rob a bank or something, but I can’t—it just doesn’t make sense to me otherwise. I don’t understand why she’d say things like that if she doesn’t.”

Something cracks in the back of his throat, something she can’t quite catch. When she shuts her eyes, tears smear hot over her cheeks. “You,” he says, and then he stops. “Christ, Darcy.”

“She’s my mom, Matt.” Her eyes are burning. “Matt, she’s my _mother,_ and I don’t—I don’t know how I can help her. I don’t know if I even can, and I just—I should be able to do something.”

“You’re not the only person who needs to try,” he says, and Darcy chokes. She must make a noise, must say something, because when she stands up he’s holding onto her, pressing her so close that she can feel his heartbeat against her sternum. When Matt turns his face into her temple, Darcy’s already started to cry.

.

.

.

This isn’t…exactly how she was expecting any of this to go, Darcy thinks, after averting yet another matricidal moment between Kitty and Tess. (Neither of them have commented on how red Darcy’s eyes are, or how Lorna keeps leaving whatever room Darcy and Matt enter, like she’s fleeing in the path of a semi-truck.) This isn’t how she expected any of it to go. Renee hasn’t made a single move to chastise her, Tess hasn’t asked her a thing about Matt, Uncle Carmen is…well, Uncle Carmen is being silent and observant as per usual, so that’s not too different. Even Gran is being fairly hands off, though judging by the quick whispers in Russian between her and Piotr when Darcy and Matt turn back up at nearly noon with a bag full of muffins, she’s fairly certain Piotr and Kitty have been warning everyone off her for a while. Which she appreciates. But seriously, this is—not at all what she’d meant to happen.

Billy and Tommy, thankfully, haven’t noticed. Kitty drops down next to her on the couch for a while, at least until Tess starts freaking out about seating arrangements. (“Mom, I don’t _care_ if Gran and Uncle Zack are next to each other on the chart, Uncle Zack _isn’t coming—_ ” “It’d be just like him to show up unexpectedly and ruin the whole thing, that’s all I’m worried about—” “ _God_ , Mom!”) Matt isn’t overly inclined to let her out of his range, either, even if it only means sitting next to her on a couch and knocking his knee into hers. She should probably want him to go away—because Christ, she’s not good at sharing, or at crying, or at crying near other people—but it’s soothing, in a weird way, to have him link his pinky through hers or kick her in the ankle when she makes a stupid joke.

The sun’s set, and Aunt Tess is talking Renee out of singing for Zeke when Gran pokes her head in, and says, “Darcy, could you help me with something in the kitchen, please?” Darcy (she’s been curled into Matt’s side for the better part of an hour, listening to him explain parts of the city to Piotr and dozing a little with her fingers wound into the fabric of his sweatshirt) blinks a few times to get the cobwebs out, and then heaves herself up. Matt catches her hand on the way.

“You good?”

“I’m good.” Darcy squeezes his fingers. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Matt holds onto her hand for a heartbeat too long, something flickering in his face. Then he lifts her fingers to his cheek, and sets his mouth to the center of her palm. He only holds her there for a second, but it still makes her lungs dry up. Darcy makes an odd rasping noise when he lets go, and she’s not sure if it’s because she’s surprised, or because she wants to bend down and kiss him.

 _You’re over this,_ she thinks, and swallows. _Sure, you had a crush at the start, but come on. You’ve been over this for years._

“Just gimme a few minutes,” she says, steadier than she’d hoped, and keeps her eyes away from Kitty. She doesn’t need anyone giving her smug looks right now.

Gran’s working alone in the kitchen when Darcy shuts the door behind her, rolling dough and whacking at it with both fists like it’s a punching bag. “Flour,” she says, and gestures behind her at the table, where the bag’s been set out. “Aprons are where they belong.”

“You want me to touch unbaked dough?”

“You’re not a disease. You won’t ruin it just by punching it a few times.” Gran folds the dough over, and rolls her fists into it. Darcy tugs an apron over her head, rubs flour on her hands, and when Gran gives her a chunk of dough to work over, goes to fucking town. She can kind of understand why Matt can punch a bag for an hour after a bad day now. It’s incredibly soothing.

It takes a few minutes (long enough for Darcy to nearly pop a knuckle against the counter, she hits the dough so hard) before Gran clears her throat. “Did something happen this morning with your mother?”

Darcy fumbles the dough. Flour spills onto the floor. “Jeez,” she says, “warn a girl, Gran,” but her voice is shaking a little. She folds the dough up again, and keeps working. “It wasn’t anything. Just Lorna being Lorna.”

“Lorna being Lorna is probably the most complicated part of coming home.”

She punches the bread dough. “She talked to you, then.”

“She came in complaining that the boy you brought home with you went crazy and threatened her while she was trying to get coffee. I read between the lines.” Gran pinches some of the dough off of her bundle, and rolls it into a snake. “I thought the pair of you were just friends.”

“We were. I mean, we are. We started dating four months ago.” She punches the dough again. “I didn’t say anything about it because—I dunno. I wanted it to just be mine for a while, I guess.”

Gran peeks at her out of the corner of her eye. When Darcy cocks her eyebrows, though, she looks away. “And you’ve known him for three years?”

“Five now. We met in Intro to Criminal Justice freshman year.”

“The one whose father was a boxer.”

“Yeah, that’s Matt.”

“And the boy who wants to be a butcher?”

She laughs. “That’s Foggy. He and Matt were roommates all through undergrad. And he doesn’t want to be a butcher, his mom wants him to be one. But yeah, we’ve all been friends for—for about the same amount of time.”

“Hmm,” says Gran, and waits. It’s her _tell me more_ noise, the one she’s used ever since Darcy can remember, and Darcy glances back over her shoulder at the door to the living room before rocking back and forth on her feet. Abruptly, she thinks of telling her gran that she’s lying, that Matt’s not actually her boyfriend, that this is fake and they’re going to go back to New York and probably pretend that none of it ever happened at all. But then the impulse fades again, because she’s pretty sure that if anyone’s going to figure it out, it’s Gran, and if she _has_ figured it out, it was probably the very first second. So that’s all irrelevant anyway.

“You remember when I was looking for that book a few years ago?” she says instead, and goes back to her dough. Gran’s forehead wrinkles a little. “ _The Accumulation of Capital_ by Rosa Luxemburg. The only copy the Columbia library had left was overdue, and shipping it from another library would have taken a week. I tried to buy a copy of it online, but Amazon kept crapping out on me, and I couldn’t find it in any of the bookstores I went to, or on eBay. And I needed it for my political science thesis, so like—it was a pain in the ass, and I was freaking out and trying to find a new source, and Foggy kept being grumpy because I was leaving my books all over his and Matt’s dorm room, and I was barely getting two hours of sleep a night because of everything I had to do. It was a really bad few days.”

“You found the book, as I recall.”

“Matt found me a copy,” Darcy says. “I don’t know where. He said there was a used bookstore I hadn’t looked at, yet, but—I dunno. He’s never owned up to it, but he dragged Foggy out for like…a whole weekend while I was buried in the library trying to finish my second draft. He didn’t need to, but he did, and he spent hours trying to find the right translation so I could use it properly, and it was—I don’t know.” Her fingers go still on the dough, just for a moment. Darcy cracks her knuckles, shakes her head, and goes back to kneading. “I still have the book.”

“I see.” Gran’s face is oddly soft, a soufflé that’s popped and settled. Darcy’s cheeks get warm at the look. “And that’s what he is?”

“That’s Matt, yeah.” She hesitates. “I tell him everything. And I’ve always told him everything. And like—he and Foggy are my best friends, yeah, but the relationship me and Foggy have, it’s not the same as the one I have with Matt. It’s never really been the same. I don’t think it ever could have been the same. Matt’s—” _Mine,_ she nearly says. Darcy stops, because that’s…not exactly where she’d wanted to go. “I don’t think I’d be the person I am without him.”

“I’d want to keep that to myself, too.”

“Like a genie in a bottle,” Darcy says, but she can’t quite smile the way she’s supposed to. Gran knocks her hip into Darcy’s, and cuts another piece of dough free so she can start to braid.

“No wonder you’re happier this year, if this is what you have in New York.”

“Don’t be gross, Gran,” says Darcy, and Katerina laughs. “It feels like I’m wading through sugar and candy and shit and it’s all gonna stick to my tights.”

“I seem to remember at one point you wanted to kick the witch out of the gingerbread house and live there.”

“And since then, I have grown older, and somewhat wiser, and wish to keep said witch on retainer so she can craft more gingerbread houses as necessary.”

Gran finishes her braid, and coils it up against wax paper so she can paint it with egg yolk. Then she takes half of Darcy’s dough, and pounds it back into shape. Darcy rolls the rest of her dough into as small a ball as she can manage, which she knows is shit for the bread, but…well, there’s a but _something_ , she just can’t think of it.

“Darcy,” says Gran. “He makes you happy?”

She doesn’t have to think about this one. It’s not even a lie. “Yeah.”

“Good.” She twists the dough into three more snakes. “He makes you happy, and he stood up to your mother. That’s earned my good opinion.”

There’s something shy and warm building in her throat. It almost feels like sunshine.

“I never blamed you, you know,” Katerina says. “For leaving.”

And that stings, right in her guts. “I never thought you did.”

“Honestly, if you hadn’t left, I would have sent you somewhere. To stay with Theresa and Carmen, probably. Or to Jennifer, if I’d known she was willing. It was a mistake to keep you here as long as you were, when your mother was doing so badly. ” Gran sets her mouth in a thin line. “I remember the morning after you left, after the fight—I don’t even remember what started it, now, but I remember the morning after. We woke up, and you were gone. I thought I was going to have a heart attack until I saw the note. I was—I was _furious_ , not with you, but with Lorna, and with myself for making you suffer that for so long.”

“Gran—”

“I’m not finished,” says Katerina, and Darcy shuts up for once. “You know, I thought having you around would help her a little, remind her that there was something outside of her own head to try for. And—and I wanted to keep you for as long as I could. But it never did get better, and I didn’t notice. Not until that last fight. That’s my fault, and I’ll take responsibility. So don’t think I blame you for anything that happened that year, Darcy.”

She doesn’t want to cry again. Darcy blinks fast, and whacks the dough with one closed fist.

“It doesn’t bother you that he’s—”

“Why would Matthew being blind bother me?”

“I was going to say Gentile,” says Darcy, “but that works too.”

Gran snorts. “If one of my grandchildren being with a Gentile bothered me, this whole wedding we’re suffering for would never have happened in the first place, don’t you think?”

“Don’t tell Aunt Tess, but I’m kind of wishing Kitty and Piotr just eloped. It would have been easier.”

Gran mutters something under her breath in Russian. “It would have meant fewer arguments about florists, that’s for sure.”

“Because God forbid they’re calla lilies,” says Darcy, and Katerina flicks flour in her face.

By the time the bread is done, Zeke’s been put to bed (Renee’s doing much better tonight; whatever maudlin mood she’d been in about her ex-wife seems to have been eradicated by sheer force of will) and Lorna’s still actively avoiding them, so Darcy spends a luxurious half an hour in the shower. The water pressure in her and Jen’s apartment tends to be on the near side of wimpy; having constant hot, pounding water is a slice of fucking nirvana. Matt’s on the phone with Foggy again when she gets back to the room, perched on the end of the bed with one shoe off. Darcy hooks the towel over her head. “Tell Foggy happy holidays.”

“He heard you,” Matt says, and tugs her down to sit next to him. Her hair drips onto the coverlet. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Not on speaker? Oooh, _I_ get secrets this time?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

“Gimme a sec.” Darcy flips her hair forward, folds it up into the towel, and resettles her glasses before taking the phone from Matt and putting it to her ear. There’s still water trickling down the back of her neck, but at least this way she won’t ruin the comforter. “Happy holidays, you mensch.”

“ _L’chaim_ ,” Foggy says, butchering it. Darcy snorts. “Merry Christmas to you. Unfortunately, your present is sitting on my desk. I forgot to give it to you before you left.”

She’d sent hers through snail mail to Foggy’s family like two weeks ago, so it’s probably already under the monstrous tree they have set up somewhere. Darcy doesn’t mention it. “Man, you suck.”  

“No, I blow.” Foggy stops. “Don’t tell Marci I said that. Anyway, I wanted to ask—is there any particular reason Matt’s acting like a stray cat with its tail caught in a car door?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.” She tips into Matt, curling her toes into the carpet. “Matt, is there any particular reason you’re acting like a stray cat with its tail caught in a car door?”

Matt ducks his head. “Not that I can think of.”

“Straight from the horse’s mouth, Foggy.” She switches her phone to her other ear. “Matt, you’re gonna want to claim the shower before Aunt Renee gets up here, she’ll take an hour and all the hot water will be gone.”

“Noted,” says Matt, and with that, he’s out the door. Apparently, Kitty had had the same idea, because there’s a burst of voices from the hallway that sounds like half an argument. On the other end of the line, Foggy makes an interesting noise.

“Wait, are you guys like—sharing a room?”

“Like I haven’t spent ninety percent of my time sleeping on your dorm room floor?” The pipes start up. Since Matt’s not back, she can safely say he won whatever argument was started with Kitty. Darcy heaves one foot up onto her knee, frowning at her toenail polish. The makeup woman that Aunt Tess hired for tomorrow will probably get all scowly at the state of her feet. _Whatever._ She’s not waxing her armpits, whatever Aunt Tess will do to her. “It’s not that big a deal. I feel like my grandmother would be suspicious if he didn’t stay in here with me, even if they’d stuck him in a separate room in the first place.”

“Would that I had your family,” says Foggy. “Pretty sure that if I brought anyone home and they wound up in my room, my mother would crucify me.”

“Trust me, keep your family. You don’t want mine.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Foggy trills in the back of his throat, the way he does when he’s sitting on a question and he doesn’t know how she’ll take it. “Can I ask you something?”

“Is it about my family?”

“Sorta, weirdly.” He sucks his teeth. “Are they doing okay with the whole you and Matt thing?”

“I mean, I’m out here because my baby cousin is marrying a ginormous Russian Gentile, pretty sure Matt’s barely a blip on their radar.” _No wonder you’re happier this year,_ Gran says in the back of her head, and Darcy drops her feet back to the floor so she can hunt around for fuzzy socks. “But nobody’s been openly hostile except my mother, which was expected. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking, like—are you ever gonna tell them that you guys aren’t actually a thing?”

“I mean, eventually. Probably. Once Aunt Renee’s fully recovered from the trauma of being divorced for a whole year.” She chips polish off her fingernails. “I’ll figure something out.”

“Is it hard pretending?”

“Foggy, are you asking me if it’s difficult to pretend Matt’s my boyfriend?”

“Call me curious.”

Darcy scrapes another piece of polish off her thumbnail. “I mean, I’m huggy. It’s not that big of a difference, I just have to get him to hug me back now.”

“Like that’s ever not happened.”

“Shut up. How are things there?”

“Candace brought her kids with her.” Foggy sounds like he’s just had a carpet ripped out from under him, surprised and very disappointed. “They’re small and yell a lot. It’s very distracting. It’s like having two tiny yous running around.”

“Classy, Foggy.” Darcy scoots back until her back is flush with the wall by the window. “Can I ask you something now?”

“Shoot, kid.”

“I’m older than you, jackass.” He makes a _pbbbt_ noise on the other end of the line. “How much do you know about Matt’s dad?”

He goes quiet, then. Foggy clears his throat. “I mean. I heard a little about him growing up. My dad watched his boxing matches. Good fighter, even if he went down a lot. But from Matt? Not a whole lot. He doesn’t talk about him.”

“No, I know, just—I don’t know.”

“You know but you don’t know?”

She draws her knees up against her chest. “I was thinking—maybe we could go with Matt to St. Patrick’s one day before the new semester starts. He usually goes during midnight mass and he couldn’t this year, so just—I dunno. Start a weird new Judeo-Christian tradition or something.”

There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Then: “You two are utterly ridiculous.”

“The hell, Foggy.”

“You figure it out,” he says, amused. “I have to go, I think Candace’s demon children are going to drag out Monopoly, and I must prove my worth.”

“Against five-year-olds?”

“Against a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old. That’s a big difference.”

“Tell yourself that, Foggy-Bear,” says Darcy. She can practically hear him rolling his eyes. “Merry Christmas.”

“Happy holidays, dork,” says Foggy, and hangs up. Darcy tosses the phone back onto the bed, and goes to fight with the tangles in her hair.

She’s braided everything back up out of her face and pulled out her laptop by the time Matt comes back, holding his glasses in one hand, fingers braced against the wall to keep track of things. “You awake?”

“Yeah.” She bounces on the bed once, and shuts the laptop. “Don’t hit the lights yet, I want to see your face.”

Matt blinks a few times. She thinks his ears might have gone pink, but she’s not entirely sure. “See my face for what?”

“It’s Christmas, idiot.” Darcy bites her lip. “Well, tomorrow’s Christmas, but tomorrow we’re flying to Chicago and then I have to disappear into a hotel spa for like…six hours to get all the fluffy stuff done, so it’s not like I could have given you this tomorrow until midnight. Which would be pointless, because then Christmas would be over. Ergo, Christmas Eve-Christmas Day present. It’s past midnight in London, and therefore it is Christmas on earth somewhere.”

He blinks again, once, twice. Then he smiles, and Darcy flushes a bit, because she hasn’t seen _that_ smile in a very long time, quiet and relaxed and flattered and pleased. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“After the past two days? Kind of did. Besides, I made this ages ago, way before I realized I’d need to, y’know, bring someone out here. So.” She scrapes her fingernail along the tape on the corner of the package, and then plops it on the bed. It’s heavy enough to make the damn bed creak, which’ll probably give Kitty ideas, but whatever, not the point. “There.”

“You’re gonna have to hand it to me, it sounded like you just dropped it.”

“Sit down, loser.” She reaches out, tugs on the hem of his shirt. “C’mon.”

Matt sits. He does it very carefully, because he’s found the edge of the present with his fingertips, but he sits. “Have you been carrying this around the whole time?”

“Yeah. It’s not as heavy as it could be. Besides, all I had in my backpack other than this was my laptop and my iPod, and those are both light, so it wasn’t too hard.” She prods at his shoulder. “Open the thing.”

“I don’t have your gift with me. I left it in New York.”

“Then give it to me when we get back, it’s okay. You came with me to Georgia, that’s enough of a Hanukkah present.” Darcy bounces again, and folds her legs up underneath her. “Seriously, Matt, unwrap it. I’m going to have to hide the paper in a shoebox and burn it secretly in the backyard before my grandmother realizes I brought a Christmas present into her house. She likes you, but she doesn’t like you that much.”

Matt huffs through his nose, and starts picking at the tape. He’s always very careful unwrapping things, finding every corner and trying not to tear the paper. Basically, he’s the worst, and she wants to smack him in the back of the head by the time he finally gets the box open, and reaches into splay his fingers over the cover. He goes very still. “A book?”

“It was Foggy’s idea, sorta.” She waits until he’s lifted it free of the cardboard, and then nudges the box onto the floor. “Remember when you guys went looking for that Rosa Luxemburg book?”

“Not particularly,” he says, but he clears his throat at the same time, so she’s like…90% sure he’s lying through his teeth. Matt’s still tracing his fingertips over the edges of the binding. “It was the last semester of undergrad, we were all pretty frazzled.”

“Yeah, sure.” She touches one finger to the spine of the book, pleased with herself. “Anyway. He mentioned something about how you don’t really go into bookstores anymore, because of your eyes and everything—which, I mean, I knew, but I didn’t know you missed it. So when he told me that, it made me start thinking, y’know, about what a pain in the ass it is to find books in braille, and how you’re always worried you won’t be able to get an audio copy of something. I mean, you have the text-to-speech reader, but even that glitches sometimes.” Darcy rests her hands on her knees. “But I looked into it, and I found this little publisher in the city that will bind books for you traditionally. When I asked if they could do a braille book they were really excited, since nobody had ever asked before. I was scared it wouldn’t turn out well because they’d never done one, and they had to get the actual pages through a braille publisher and then reset them, but this is super nice. It’s like—book swag. Sucker was heavy, though, I thought the lady in security at JFK was gonna take it away from me. I don’t think she’d ever seen a braille book before.”

His face is very blank. Matt opens the book, draws his fingers over the dots of the title. She can see it click in his head, the realization of what it is. “You had them make a book of star charts?”

“Well, I mean.” She flutters a little. “You can’t see the sky anymore. And I know you miss it, even though you don’t talk about it. And I thought, Foggy and I, we can describe colors, and clouds and stuff, but stars are harder. I don’t know a thing about stars. I mean, I can point out Cassiopeia and Pegasus, but that’s different from actually knowing anything.” Darcy touches her fingertips to the bumps. She’s never caught the hang of braille, though to be fair she hasn’t tried very hard. She’d asked him to show her, once or twice, but it had never quite clicked. “I thought maybe you’d want some way to actually see them again. Even if it’s only on paper.”

Matt says nothing. He turns another page. Then, very carefully, he shuts the book. She’s half-expecting it, but when he hooks an arm around her shoulders and pulls her into him, it still makes her jump. The point of his chin digs into her scalp.

“Darcy,” he says, and his voice is very broken. “You didn’t need to do that. This must have cost a fortune.”

“Not as much as you’re thinking.” More than she should have been spending, to be honest, but she’d wanted to do it. There’s something hot and uncomfortable pressing at the backs of her eyes. “I wanted to, Matt. It’s a gift.”

Matt makes a funny wet sound that she thinks might be a laugh, and puts a hand to the back of her head, pressing his lips to her damp hair. “You made me a book.”

“I paid minions to make a book.”

“You had them make me a book.” He can’t stop touching it. Something burns in her throat, and if she were in any way a closet romantic (which she isn’t) she’d say it was almost like a star. “You made me a book about stars.”

“Did I break your brain?”

“Little bit.” He kisses her hair again. “Shut your eyes.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

Darcy blinks at him a few times—she’s not sure what to expect, really, not from a Matt who’s smiling so wide she thinks he might hurt himself—but she shuts her eyes. “Closed.”

“Keep them that way.” She can hear pages turning. Then, very gently, he takes one of her hands, and presses her fingertips to paper. “That,” he says, drawing her hand from one point to the next, along a raised line to mark out the constellation, “is Scorpio.”

She doesn’t start crying, but it’s a very near thing. Darcy peeks through her eyelashes at the look on his face, wondering if she can memorize it before he notices.

“Show me,” she says.

.

.

.

She’s really, really glad she brought her peacoat when they touch down in Chicago, because there’s a freakish foot and a half of snow on the ground. Kitty looks delighted, peering out the window and turning to chatter in Russian to Piotr (he smiles a little, and corrects her pronunciation once before nodding back to the jetway) but Billy and Tommy look miserable. “Mom’s the snowbaby, not us,” says Tommy, heaving his duffel off of the baggage belt and dumping it on the floor. “And Billy, lucky bastard, has a boyfriend to keep him from losing all his fingers and toes. I’m stuck alone.”

“Poor you,” says Darcy, and hooks her fingers through Matt’s. (She’s not about to say that her hands are cold, because her hands are always cold, and it has nothing to do with the weather.) “Guess you’re going to have to pick up some unsuspecting female at the reception, then.”

“Believe it or not, that was the plan,” says Tommy, and waggles his eyebrows so exaggeratedly that she has to laugh. She makes a mental note to shove snow down the back of his shirt before they fly out the day after tomorrow, but she laughs, and Tommy looks quite pleased with himself.

Piotr and Kitty are having the ceremony in a tiny church near the lake. Which means, Darcy thinks, that _everyone_ is going to freeze their asses off, because small churches tend not to have the best insulation, and the beach is fucking freezing in Chicago in December. Piotr’s Russian, though, and his parents are like…fucking yetis (Piotr’s dad is in shorts, for God’s sake), so they’ll at least be all right. The reception is at the same hotel they’re staying at, a not-too-big, not-too-small place near downtown. Kitty loops her arm through Darcy’s as soon as they get the rooms organized. “Sorry, Murdock, stealing your girlfriend. Go talk to Piotr.”

“Chill, Kit-Kat,” Darcy says, and prods Kitty in the side. “Let me at least get my stuff settled in the room. It’s not like I’m dying to get my eyebrows plucked.”

“You think I am? Cassie and Jubilee are gonna be here in like ten minutes.” Kitty’s passed excited and hit frantic, apparently. Darcy has to fight the urge to pat her head and tell her everything will be okay. “You’d better be downstairs by then.”

“Ten minutes. Probably less,” Darcy says, and flaps her hands. “Shoo.”

Kitty flashes the _I’m watching you_ sign at her, but buzzes off to the elevators anyway. Matt’s trying not to smile. “She okay?”

“She’ll be fine once she bellows at someone. It’ll probably be me. If you hear screaming, don’t come look.” Darcy digs through her bag, and tosses the little package from Jen to Kitty onto the bed. “We’re stuck with a single again, sorry.”

“So long as you keep up the streak of not kicking me in the stomach, I think we’ll be fine.”

“Backatcha, Murdock. At least the bed’s bigger this time.” When she peeks at him out of the corner of her eye, Matt’s still standing by the door, face turned towards her, smiling. “What?”

“Nothing.” He doesn’t stop, though. She’s going to turn pink again, if he keeps this up. “Day three?”

“Day three. Thirty-six hours remain.” She shoves the little package into the pocket of her sweatshirt. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, so like—wander as you see fit. I think Piotr and the twins might be doing something non-wedding-related, since there’s finally enough room for them to hide from Tess without her finding them too fast. I’ll call you when I’m done, okay?”

“Okay.”

For once, she doesn’t hesitate about going up on her toes and kissing his cheek. Matt slips his fingers through one of her belt loops, holding her still. A few doors down the hall, Aunt Tess is shouting into her phone again. Piotr’s mom (he’d inherited his height and his massive amount of chill from his mother’s side, apparently) says something in low, rumbling, soothing tones that don’t do much to strangle the panic. When Darcy drops back to the ground again, Matt puts his mouth to her hair. “Go.”

“Don’t get into trouble,” she says, and laughs when he pushes at her with both hands. “And if you can possibly think of an excuse to get me out of the spa thing, I would appreciate it. I think they’re gonna try to put wax on me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

At the very start of it, when Kitty had first called her to say, “So, hey, I’m getting married on Boxing Day, you wanna be a bridesmaid?” they’d been talking about a tiny wedding in a tiny church and a tiny reception. Then, of course, Tess had turned into a monster (Darcy doesn’t think she’s going to wind up married like…ever, but she’s made a mental note over the past few days to just not tell Tess if she does) so the tiny wedding in the tiny church and a tiny reception has turned into some kind of frothy explosion of lace and ridiculousness. The number of bridesmaids has never changed, though. One of them Darcy’s met before—Jubilee had been Kitty’s first roommate at Culver. Cassie Lang’s a new acquisition from her first year at grad school, gangly and spunky with freckles sprinkled over her nose. The only person who seems at all into the idea of having random women (and men, judging by the hair salon) fussing over skin and nails and makeup for the next few hours is Jubilee, and that’s mostly because, like Kitty, she’s a little shit-stirrer with a streak of wicked humor that makes Darcy think of a black Hildy Johnson. “You can keep your white-girl hairdos, I’m just going to put mine up,” she says, and sticks to her guns for the entirety of the mani-pedi in spite of one of the hair stylists looking like he wants to take a wrench to the back of her head.

It’s finally starting to hit Kitty, though. The fact that she’s getting married tomorrow. It’s Christmas Day, there are stylists and salon workers in despite the fact that basically nobody wants to be here, and Kitty is _getting married tomorrow_. It’s enough of a shock for Darcy, considering everything, but Kitty…well, Kitty. The longer it takes for the masseuse to work the knots out of Kitty’s shoulders, the darker her face gets. Darcy flops onto her stomach onto an empty bed on Kitty’s far side, presses her cheek to the little pillow. “Y’know, I’m fairly sure massages are supposed to relax you, not make you look like a mass murderer.”

Kitty snorts. She looks pissed about it, but she snorts, and turns to face Darcy. There are little rings under her eyes that weren’t there yesterday, and a knot of tension in her jaw that makes her teeth creak. “I know you are, but what am I?”

“Cute, Kit-Kat.”

“I thought you said you were doing all right,” Cassie says, and swings her feet down to the floor, pulling her bathrobe tightly closed. “You were happy on the phone yesterday. You were really excited.”

“I’m not _not_ happy. Just—can we leave it?”

“Kitty,” says not Cassie but Jubilee. Darcy folds her arms under the pillow, and watches as the masseuse (the woman looks exhausted, but she’s hella good at her job, and she’s in on Christmas, so Darcy makes a mental note to just like…leave food for her or something) slips out of the room to get more massage oil. “Seriously, if you don’t tell us, who are you gonna tell?”

“Piotr?” says Kitty, as if it’s obvious. Which, when Darcy thinks about it, it kind of is. “I mean, I talked about it with him. Well, maybe not this specifically, but just—I don’t want him to think I don’t want to do this. Because I _do_ want to do this. I’m the one who talked him into doing this in the first place. And it’s been fine up until the past like…hour and a half. I probably ate something weird.”

“You, eat something weird? No.”

Kitty grabs a used makeup remover pad out of the garbage can by her bed, and pelts it at Darcy’s face. “Shut up.”

“Wedding jitters are a thing though.” Cassie rocks back and forth on the futon. “I think that’s why people are supposed to go out and get drunk the night before. Or why you go out to stag and hen parties and _get_ drunk. Because you’re nervous and it helps.”

“Please don’t ever say the words _stag and hen parties_ ever again, because it’s gross and I’m not doing it.” Kitty tosses a makeup remover pad at Cassie, too (Cassie ducks) and buries her face in the little pillow, mumbling something into the fabric.

“English, Kit-Kat. Or Russian. Or Spanish. I’m good with Spanish.”

“Your Russian is shit,” Kitty says. “It’s not even wedding jitters. It’s more like—I don’t know. I’m pissed at my mom for being so freaky about it, and I’m worried that it’s gonna snow tomorrow and people are gonna get lost, and with my luck Uncle Zachary will show up last minute and throw a shitfit because Piotr’s Gentile, and what if he didn’t really want to get married yet anyway? Like—I mean. I know he wants to, because he said yes and it didn’t take all that much to convince him that now was good, but…I don’t know.”

“You asked him?” Darcy whistles, and sits up, bunching the pillow in her lap. “Go, Kitty.”

“Shut up, like you’re not basically on the verge of engagement.” Kitty makes a face at her. “You guys are disgusting. It’s been like…four months, and you’re fluffy. If you’re still fluffy after four months it’s probably stuck and being in the same room as you is going to be consistently nauseating.”

Darcy’s not sure if she’s just burning up from how hard she’s blushing, or if the masseuse just cranked the heater to like…ninety. “ _Kitty_.”

Kitty opens her mouth, and shuts it again. “Cassie, get a photo of her, quick, I think you could cook an egg on her face.”

Darcy makes a strangled little noise, and slams the pillow so hard into Kitty’s back that it actually echoes. “You _asshole_ , Kitty Pryde! I come out all this way and deal with my mother for you and now you’re giving me shit—”

“Darcy, you’re turning purple.” Kitty seizes a pillow, and whacks Darcy’s weapon out of range. “I’ve never ever seen you blush so hard you turned _purple._ ”

Darcy squashes her face into her hands. “God, shut _up_!”

“You’re turning purple over your _boyfriend._ ”

 _He’s not,_ she nearly says, but she bites her tongue just in time. “Just because you decided to turn into a bastion of heteronormativity—”

“No wonder you never shut up about him before,” Kitty says. It’s sort of muffled, like all the blood that’s rushed to her face and neck has plugged her ears. “Whenever we would talk on the phone it would always be like…constant references—”

“It was _not—_ ” Darcy makes a noise like a steaming kettle. “We were _friends—_ ”

“ _I_ thought you just had a huge crush on him and didn’t want to say anything because you’re so bad at feelings, but Jesus, Lewis, the guy thinks you walk on water. You’ve probably been disgustingly in love for years and just never fucking noticed—”

“What, like you and Piotr?” says Jubilee, and Kitty flushes pink.

“ _I_ at least said something right at the start, _he_ was the one who had to be like, _I’m five years older than you, I don’t want to take advantage_ —like I’d let anyone ever take advantage of me, Jesus Christ—”

“He was a TA in your chemistry class, Kitty, he kind of had a point—”

“Wait, TA McHotAss was _Piotr_?” Darcy says, and this time it’s Kitty who’s hiding her face in her hands.

“ _Stop_ , oh my God—”

“After all that bullshit you just pulled? Like hell—”

“I’m ordering vodka,” says Cassie, and goes to talk to the woman at the front desk.

.

.

.

Darcy escapes before the waxing, claiming allergies. Instead of going to find Matt, though (like she’s not going to turn magenta the next time she sees him, because _Christ,_ Kitty, how is she supposed to keep a straight face for the rest of the day?) she presents herself to Gran, Tess, Renee, and Piotr’s mother (“Yelena,” she says, in a burr like Piotr’s, and shakes Darcy’s hand in a way that basically snaps Darcy’s whole body out like a wet sheet) to bitch about the florist again. “This is why I eloped,” Renee says on her third drink, while Tess makes high, frazzled noises into the phone. Gran is knitting with the ball of yarn in Grand’s lap, nodding solemnly to whatever it is that Yelena is explaining in Russian. Tess and Renee are twins, but Renee’s had her hair dark and in a Peter Pan bob for as long as Darcy can remember, while Tess keeps hers to her shoulders and dyes it violently purple every other month in an attempt to be spontaneous. “I knew if I let Tess get her hands on my wedding, she’d do _exactly_ this.”

Gran, over by Yelena, catches Darcy’s eye and winks.

“I’m sorry about you and Marina, Aunt Renee,” says Darcy, and heaves Zeke up onto her lap. (He keeps falling back against her legs, dozing off. It’s basically the only time she can trust him not to try and bite her. Like Darla the cat, she realizes. Zeke is a screechy human Darla.) “I know I said that before.”

“You’ve said it like a million times and it never helps,” says Renee, but she pats at Darcy’s shoulder anyway. (Well, she paws at it, and nearly scratches with her long nails, but it’s the thought that counts.) Then she looks into her margarita glass, like it holds some kind of answer. “I get why she wanted out of it. I’m an asshole.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re a shit liar.” Renee leans back in her chair. “I’m an asshole, and Marina was way too good for me, and eventually she figured it out. The only reason she’s not at this wedding is because she knew I’d show up.”

“You’re not the Big Bad Wolf, Aunt Renee.”

“No, you’re right. I’m Maleficent.” She twirls the margarita glass between her fingers. “I had a point. I’m guessing it was something like _don’t turn into me, kiddo, it really fucking sucks_ , but it’s possible it wasn’t.”

“It sounds like you were leading up to something like that, so I’ll take it.”

“Y’know,” Renee says, when the conversation starts back up again and Zeke has passed out and started drooling into Darcy’s sweatshirt, “you look a hell of lot like your mom.”

Darcy digs her teeth into her tongue. “I know.”

“It’s not a criticism.” Renee glances at the door, like she’s worried Lorna is listening. “I met your mom when Dad and Katerina started dating—I think you must have been five, which would have made your mom twenty-one—how old are you now?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Christ.” Renee takes another sip of her margarita. “You look like she did back then. But you don’t, at the same time. I don’t know why. Just—it’s like déjà vu, looking at your face. An alternate universe déjà vu, but still déjà vu.”

“That is probably the weirdest compliment I have ever had about my face.” Darcy strokes a few of Zeke’s curls back from his forehead, and resettles him on her lap. His hair tickles at her neck. “Thank you, I think.”

“It’s because you’re happier,” Renee says, and it hits her like a punch to the gut. “Even back then, Lorna wasn’t very happy. There are a lot of reasons for that, and the fact that she’s sick is a big one, but just—you’re happier than she is. You’ve found people you’re happy with and a place you fit in. It makes you less of an asshole.”

“I’m still an asshole, though.”

“Nah,” says Renee. “Your mom’s an asshole. It makes her good to drink with, and bad at everything else. I’ve thought that since my dad and your gran started dating, and she’s never done a thing to change that opinion.”

“Aunt Renee—”

“Just—some people get fucked up in ways you can’t fix, and good people have shit kids or shit parents or shit spouses. Sick or not, some people are just shit. Doesn’t make you shit, is all I’m saying.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Renee hooks her bangs back behind her ear. There’s a stain of cherry lipstick on her shirt cuff, but Darcy doesn’t mention it. “It would be easier if Marina was just as much of an asshole as me or your mom. It would make it easier to hate her.”

Darcy pets Zeke’s hair for a minute or two. When she reaches out and touches the back of Renee’s hand, her aunt doesn’t yank away. She doesn’t squeeze back, sure—she kind of leaves her fingers there like dead sardines—but she doesn’t wrench her hand away like she’s being poisoned, which is at least better than it could be.

By the time dinner is over, it’s official: Billy Kaplan and Teddy Altman are declared the most absolutely, grossly, nauseatingly in-love couple in the wedding party. They ought to have crowns or hats or something, but it’s snowing outside, so Tommy settles for throwing a snowball at the back of his brother’s head on the way out to whatever bar they’re dragging Piotr out to. Jubilee goes with them (“I packed club clothes for a reason, Kitty”) and Darcy’s pretty sure she should be worried about how fast Jubilee and Tommy have clicked, but she’s too tired to really manage it. Kitty’s claimed a headache, which is code for _if I see one more person trying to get into my headspace I am going to scream,_ and Cassie and Tess have ushered her off somewhere to cool her down. She’s debating about going after them ( _matricide,_ her instincts are screaming, _Kitty’s going to commit matricide_ ) when Matt knocks his fingers against hers under the table.

“You’re quiet.”

 _You’ve probably been disgustingly in love for years and never fucking noticed,_ Kitty says in her head, and _shit._ She’s turning red. Darcy swallows once or twice, and hides behind her hat and her hair. “I’m tired. I think I’ve had more deep, emotional discussions with my family over the past few days than I’ve had in basically the entirety of my life up until this point.” 

“Weddings do that.” He pauses. “Well, so I’ve heard.”

“You’ve never been to a wedding?”

“I think I went to one when I was a kid, but all I remember is being mad that I had to sit in a pew for an hour and not talk to anyone. I don’t even remember whose it was. Friend of my dad’s, maybe.”

“Can I just say, the deep emotional moments kind of suck.” Across the table, Uncle Carmen laughs at something Grand said in German. Darcy scoots her chair sideways, and tips, her cheek on Matt’s shoulder. “And there’s still the wedding to get through, tomorrow.”

“And then home.”

“And then home.” Darcy touches her fingers to the package in her jeans pocket, the gift for Kitty from Jen, and shifts her head back just enough that she can make out Matt’s expression. “Nobody’s told me whether I’m dancing with Teddy or Billy or Tommy first, tomorrow, and I feel like that means I’m gonna be stuck with Tommy and nobody’s brave enough to give me the bad news.”

“Hm,” says Matt. He rests his nose to her hair for a moment. “There are worse things that could happen.”

“You’ll jinx us if you say things like that,” she says, and Matt scoffs. “The whole thing’s gonna be nondenominational, since Kitty’s like…really lapsed and Piotr’s some weird flavor of Russian Orthodox, so there won’t be any Jewish wedding things to confuse you. You just get to sit around and look pretty while I go fucking crazy trying to keep everyone from falling apart.”

“Excellent. I’m good at sitting around looking pretty.”

Darcy pinches him hard in the ribs, and doesn’t shift away, even if her face is buzzing. It’s not like Kitty’s here to tease her. “Would I be a terrible cousin if I just fell asleep before going to rescue Kitty from her mother?”

“I think Cassie has it handled.” Matt brushes hair back out of her face, though how he figured out it was there, she has no idea. She had no idea he was so damn _touchy_ , either. It’s like whatever weird nun-based reticence is entirely gone, and she can’t say she misses it too much. “You’ll see Kitty in the morning.”

“Don’t let me forget to give Kitty Jen’s vibrator,” says Darcy. Matt blinks a few times, and then finally decides it’s a joke, judging by the way he relaxes.

“As opposed to someone else’s vibrator?”

“That would be unsanitary,” she says, and shuts her eyes. She’s not sure how long they sit there, how long she dozes, but she knows that most of her family has vanished back upstairs by the time Matt and Cassie (who has emerged from the Pryde den) herd her into the elevator and up into bed. She can hear them talking softly over her head as she falls back to sleep.

Darcy snaps awake seven minutes before the scheduled wake-up call, so suddenly and completely that she wonders if Kitty’s snuck in to bellow in her ear. It feels as if someone’s wedged a cotton ball into her mouth, and she’s warm enough that it’s verging on the edge of uncomfortable, tangled up in blankets and pillows. She kind of needs to pee. When she shifts, though, picking at the edge of the comforter to push it back, Matt makes an odd little noise in the back of his throat, and Darcy freezes.

Somehow, for two nights, they’ve both managed to be entirely independent sleepers. Which is weird, because Darcy gravitates towards heat sources, even if she sleeps like the dead. But they’ve managed, and Darcy’s managed to detach herself from the mattress without much effort. Now, though—Christ. Now Matt’s curled around her, braced against her shoulder with his arm over her waist and his nose and mouth brushing against her ear. Darcy shuts her eyes, and takes a very deep, slow breath, willing herself to relax. _He’s asleep,_ she thinks, and when she turns her head just enough that she can make out his face, yeah. He’s definitely asleep. His hair’s mussed and his lips are parted and he’s breathing quietly. Every time he exhales, it tickles against her cheek. When she shifts, his fingers press ever so slightly into her side, like he’s trying to keep her there, and _Christ fuck shit hell_. This is—definitely not something they’ve done before. Not ever. Not at all.

She swallows. She has two options here, as far as she can tell. She can detangle herself, as slowly and as carefully as possible, and deal with the consequences if Matt wakes up in the middle of it. Or (she looks back at the clock, and two minutes have gone by) she can pretend to be asleep when the phone goes off in five minutes. It’s not like it would be the first time she’s slept through a phone call, and the phone itself is on Matt’s side of the bed anyway ( _Christ, Christ, Matt’s side of the bed, when did you start thinking of it like that, Lewis_ ) so she’d be in the clear.

Five minutes, she thinks. She can do five minutes. Kitty’s getting married today, and she just woke up in bed with her best friend wrapped around her like a cat, and tomorrow the ruse is up and they go back to New York and this is never going to happen again. If she’d woken up when the phone had gone off, five minutes from now, it wouldn’t have been any different. So yeah, she can manage five minutes.

Darcy shuts her eyes very tight, and starts going over her list of things to do. Make sure Jubilee and Tommy haven’t killed each other, that’s the first one. Make sure Kitty and Tess don’t slaughter each other before everyone makes it to the church. Give Kitty the gift from Jen. Print out plane tickets somehow so they don’t lose them. Figure out if she’s expected to bring the bridesmaid dress home with her, or if it stays with Kitty. (She lets out a breath, and Matt curls his arm tighter around her waist, pushes his nose further into her hair, and when his lips scuff over the edge of her ear she has to bite her tongue to keep from squeaking, and _to do list, Lewis, come on_ —) Then there’s the church and Piotr’s family and making sure Billy and Tommy and Teddy aren’t still drunk, keeping an eye on her mother from afar to make sure she doesn’t slip and die in a gutter, finding someone willing to watch Zeke without strangling the bitey little shit, making sure Grand gets to everything okay, possibly calling Jen because what the fuck is she supposed to do now that she knows what it’s like to wake up and have Matt holding onto her like he doesn’t want to let go—

The phone rings. Through some miracle, Darcy doesn’t jump. Matt shifts, and goes still, just for a moment. She can’t hear him breathing, and she wonders if he’s holding it. Then he rolls away onto his side, and answers the phone. Her whole side feels frigid.

The phone’s back in the cradle and Matt’s turned his face up to the ceiling when Darcy finally manages to move, pushing the covers back. “Hey,” he says. His voice is all crackly, muzzy and sleep-hoarse, and that’s just making it worse. She feels scummy, like she’s something that you can only find underneath a cracked bathtub, or growing in the depths of a radioactive cave. Weird and glowing and full of slime. “Awake?”

“Yeah.” Darcy clambers out of the bed. “I’m gonna shower, okay?”

“Mm,” says Matt, hiding his face under a pillow.

Darcy turns the water on as cold as she can manage it, and suffers in silence.

Gran’s brought her polaroid. She’s left the flash on (“ _rude_ ,” Tommy says from the other end of the table, covering his eyes and looking generally hungover, “that is _rude,_ Mrs. P—”) and Darcy’s still blinking spots from her eyes when Tess frog-marches her back into the hotel spa to get her hair done. Kitty’s already inside, sitting in one of the makeup chairs with two very small stylists sharing the apparent project that is Kitty’s hair. “I washed it last night,” Kitty says, sounding depressed. “Apparently it wrecked their plans.”

“I washed mine this morning,” says Darcy, and one of the stylists looks as if she just said she shot a kitten in cold blood. “When did Piotr and the others get back?”

“I think three. I wasn’t awake when he came in.” Tess makes a distressed little sound from the back of the room, and Kitty snaps, “The only reason people think it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding is because they used to sell women into marriage and they didn’t want the guy to bolt if he didn’t like her face, okay, Mom, so can you just not?”

“I don’t know if that’s the reason, but it’s a pretty good theory.” Darcy hooks her hand through Kitty’s. “Chill, Kit-Kat. Trust me, your grad presentation will be way worse than this. People will actually care if you fuck up. Here you just stand around and listen to people you love say nice things about you, say _I do_ , and then you’re done. You don’t even have to defend yourself.”

Kitty snorts, and stares at herself in the mirror. They haven’t put makeup on her yet—to keep any of it from smearing on the dress, Darcy thinks—but she looks lovely anyway. Like she actually slept. “Thanks for that, law school.”

“Any time, comp-sci.” She holds onto Kitty’s hand for a minute or two longer (the engagement ring is very cold against her fingers) and then lets go before one of the stylists can crash into her. “Where are Cassie and Jubilee?”

“I think Jubilee stayed in Tommy’s room last night, I didn’t see her in the gym when I came down.”

“Judging by the way she was smirking at breakfast and the hickey on her neck, I’d say that’s a yes.” There had been a splotch of color over Tommy’s throat, too. She’d congratulate them, if they wouldn’t be reprehensibly smug about the whole thing. “And Cassie?”

“She went to get something from her room, she’ll be back.” Tess’s phone rings. She excuses herself, plugging her free ear with one finger, and Kitty makes an angry little noise in the back of her throat. “If that thing goes off one more time I’m going to crush it under my shoe.”

“I’ll try to confiscate it.” Darcy fumbles in her pocket, and then presses the little present into Kitty’s hand. “That’s from Jen. She said she wanted you to use it.”

Kitty turns it over between her fingers. “You know what it is?”

“No, but it’s from Jen, so it can’t be anything explosive. She asked me to give it to you when your mom wasn’t here, though. I think there’s some weird family stuff about it.”

“Huh.” Kitty, at least, knows how to properly unwrap things. She tears the paper into pieces with both hands, undoes the plastic. It takes Darcy a moment to recognize what it is. A comb, she thinks, as Kitty turns it over in her palm. Well, not a comb, exactly. A hair ornament shaped like a comb, curving so it can fit against the line of someone’s skull. It’s all silver and latticework, no pearls or gems or anything else, just carved metal. Kitty goes quiet, looking at it. She runs her fingers along the points. “This is from Jen?”

“She said her mom used it.”

“Jen’s mom—”

“—died when she was little, yeah.”

Shit. At least she gave Kitty the comb before they put the makeup on her. Kitty looks ready to cry. “And she’s giving it to me?”

“She said it was a loan. That every woman in the family who gets married should be able to use it. That’s what her mom wanted, apparently. I think it’s like a _keep this in trust_ kinda thing.”   

“And Jen didn’t want to use it?”

Darcy cocks an eyebrow. “Can you see Jen ever getting married?”

“Point.” Kitty swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ll have to call her before the ceremony. This is—I can’t believe she did this.”

“She really wanted to come, y’know.” Darcy heaves herself up out of the chair, and glances at the door. Tess is still on the phone, flapping her hand like she’s trying to chase away gnats. “Probably would have been better if she’d come rather than me. She’d have managed your mom better.”

“You’ve managed literally _everyone else_ outside of my mother.” Kitty folds her hair up against the back of her head, and fixes the comb in it as best she can. One of the stylists wavers, like she wants to say something. Darcy glares her into silence, and comes around to stand behind Kitty’s chair so she can fix it. “Don’t think we haven’t noticed you trying to do that. The first thing you did when you walked in the door was put Renee to bed.”

“She needed to sleep in a bed instead of tripping over Zeke.”

“Oh, shut up,” says Kitty fondly. She meets Darcy’s eyes in the mirror. “You were right, yesterday. You came even though you knew your mom would be here, and that—that’s pretty impressive, D, not gonna lie.”

“Since when did _that_ nickname come back?” Darcy twists Kitty’s hair up off the back of her neck. “Sounds like a dick joke. _Hey, man, you want the D? She’s right here._ ”

“Jesus Christ,” says Kitty, but she’s snickering. When Darcy finishes, and puts her fingers to Kitty’s shoulders, Kitty covers Darcy’s hand with hers. “I’m really glad you could come.”

She works her throat, just for a second. _I’m not crying. You’re crying._ “I’m glad I could come, too,” she says, and kisses the top of Kitty’s head. “And I’m glad I could bring Jen’s comb proxy.”

“Mom will pitch a shitfit that she didn’t know about it, but it doesn’t clash with my dress or the ring, so _c’est la_ fucking _vie_ , Maman.” Kitty turns her head a little so the comb catches the light. “My dress is red, by the way. And so is yours.”

“I knew you were my favorite baby cousin.” Darcy bends down, presses her cheek to Kitty’s. Kitty smells like citrus shampoo and hand lotion and something that she thinks might have been left behind by Piotr, an aftershave that’s a little too woodsy for her taste but fits in with Kitty perfectly. In the mirror, they look like they could be sisters. “You love him?”

“Absolutely,” says, and it seems to shine out of her, the truth of that. “With everything. Yes.”

“Then you’ll be fine.”

Kitty turns, and kisses Darcy’s cheek. “You will be too,” she says. “Now get off me before Mom has a hernia.”

“I thought it was an aneurysm,” Darcy says, but she gets off.  

.

.

.

The dress is, indeed, red. Kitty’s is darker, closer to arterial than crimson, floor-length, high-necked and backless, molding precisely to every single curve. Darcy, Jubilee, and Cassie get brighter shades, with Cassie’s being the brightest, and Jubilee’s the darkest. Darcy’s somewhere in the middle, and she really, really likes how the dress is cut, the wide black band around her waist and how the fabric flares at her knees when she spins out. The sleeves are just long enough to hide the band around her arm, but not the tattoos at her wrists, and she refuses to let the makeup artist cover them up. “Tess can deal with it,” she says. “If she yells at you, send her to me.” The shoes aren’t high enough to kill her, too, which, thank fucking God. Strappy and red and open-toed. They’ll be shit in the snow, but inside, she’ll be fine.

Piotr gets carted off by his dad, Gran, Uncle Carmen, Billy, and Tommy about an hour before the ceremony, and Tess is winding up into catastrophe (“—what do you _mean,_ Zachary’s on his way here, tell him the wrong church, _stall him_ , for Christ’s sake, I don’t want him at this wedding—”), so Darcy’s the one to get Kitty and Jubilee and Cassie into the right car, and Darcy’s the one who makes sure Renee’s out of the room and Zeke’s where he’s supposed to be when they make it to the church. She was right—this place is _fucking freezing_ , enough so that before the staff set up the space heaters she’s pretty sure her fingers have turned a little blue. It’s twenty minutes before the ceremony starts and basically _everyone but her_ is having a panic attack in separate rooms when her phone goes off.

“Foggy,” she says when she answers, “now is really not a great time.”

“The ceremony hasn’t started, has it?”

“No, but—”

“Then it’s a fine time.”

Darcy fights the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. She might muss her makeup or something, and she’d rather not endure death by Tess Pryde. “You have no idea how weddings work, do you?”

“I have been to three, and been part of the wedding party in two, and know that you can grab three minutes on the phone without someone killing you. But not beyond that, so you need to shush.” Foggy takes a huge breath. “Look, I know this is a really shit time and everything, but—I don’t know. You sounded kind of weird last night. I wanted to see if you were doing okay.”

Her throat sticks. Darcy swallows twice, and stares up at the ceiling. Then she wraps her shawl tighter around her shoulders (it won’t do much, the thing’s basically made of tissue paper, but at least it covers her skin a little) before slipping out the side door into what the church secretary has been calling the garden. It’s mostly concrete and snow, but at least her shoes won’t sink into mud or something. On the other end of the line, Foggy says, “Darce, you still there?”

“I’m here.” She crushes a clump of snow under the ball of her foot. “Sorry. Just—it’s been a weird few days.”

“Matt said your mom pulled some shit.”

“Not just that, like—” Christ. If she can’t tell Foggy, who can she tell? “You can’t freak out.”

“Why would I freak out?” says Foggy, warily. She opens her mouth, and then shuts it again. “Darcy. Why would I freak out?”

She presses her back to the wall. “They _like_ him, Foggy. My gran really likes him. And like—Kitty likes him, and I think even my aunt Renee said she liked him even if it was super roundabout and kinda couched in her _woe is me I let the love of my life divorce me last year_ stuff, and I think they’re gonna expect to hear about him and about us and everything now, and I can’t—I can’t tell them they’re wrong when they say I’m happy around him, because I _am_ , and Foggy, it just—this feels _normal_ , this feels like something that’s, y’know, it doesn’t feel fake half the time, and everyone keeps saying we’re adorable and that they approve and all this stuff like, you know, you’d say to someone getting fucking engaged or something, and Matt told my mom that he thinks I’m one of the most amazing people he’s ever met and Kitty said that she thought I’ve had a crush on him for years and I don’t even know what’s happening with my brain anymore, and just— _Foggy_. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s going on and I think I’m going to explode—”

“Holy shit, slow down—”

“Foggy, everyone thinks I’m in love with him and I can’t—” Darcy swallows. There’s snow in her hair. Tess is going to _kill her_. “I can’t tell them I’m not.”

Carefully, he says, “Because you told them you and Matt are dating and you don’t want to blow your cover?”

She opens her mouth, and shuts it. Then she says, “I don’t think so.”

Foggy goes dead silent. Darcy clutches her phone. Inside, Kitty snaps something about nail polish, and then shuts up again. Finally, Foggy clears his throat. “What do you want to do?”

“What am I _supposed_ to do?” She rocks back and forth on her feet. “I can’t be in love with Matt, Foggy, that’s—I would have _noticed_. I would have noticed that happening. How do you fall in love with someone without noticing?”

“Darcy, you’re like—queen of pretending you don’t feel things. It’s why it was so freaky that time in sophomore year when you came back from Georgia and cried for a week.”

She laughs. It sounds way too wet to be appropriate for a wedding. “Don’t tell me you noticed that too.”

“Kind of hard not to. You don’t smoke weed or anything, but your eyes were red like…all the fucking time. And you kept hiding in the bathroom when you thought we weren’t paying attention.”

“Nice to know I’m good at hiding shit.”

“You’re a pro.” There’s a click from the other end of the line. Foggy coughs. “Look, I can’t tell you what _you_ would do. But you wanna know what I would do?”

“Not fall in love with Matt in the first place?”

“Well, yeah, because y’know, Matt’s hot and everything, but I’m pretty sure he’d find some way to drive me up the fucking wall before a week was out, so I’m glad I’m immune to whatever pheromones he has. But that’s not the point.”

“Pheromones aren’t the point?”

“Not right now, no.” He sighs. “I’d talk to him about it.”

“Christ, Foggy, I can’t—you want me to talk to him about it?”

“Just trust me on this one, okay? He’d want to know. Even if it means things are kind of awkward for a while, he’d want to hear it.” Foggy’s voice goes a little odd at the end, like he’s trying not to smile, which is…completely inappropriate and thus not something he can be doing. Darcy tosses the thought aside. “For now, just get through the wedding and get back to the city so I can get rid of this dumb Christmas present.”

She can do that. She _can_ do that. She can manage one more day. Darcy dabs very carefully at her eyes. Thank fuck for waterproof mascara. “Speaking of Christmas. Did you get what I sent you?”

“You mean the avocado-shaped bookends? Yes, those are on my desk.” He sounds pleased. “I’m going to use them in the office.”

“We don’t have an office.”

“We’re gonna get an office eventually and these masterpieces are going to be front and fucking center.” Foggy hums, happily. “Did Matt like the book?”

“Yeah, Matt liked the book.” For some reason her cheeks start burning again. “I think he really liked the book.”

“You think,” Foggy says. “That’s good, at least.”

Tess makes a screechy noise, and Darcy abruptly wishes for a cigarette. “Shit. I need to get back inside. I’ll call you from the airport, okay?”

“Knock ‘em on their asses, Lewis,” says Foggy, and hangs up. Darcy turns her face up to the sky—it’s snowing again, and it’s freezing on her blazing face—and takes three very deep breaths before slipping back into the church.

The ceremony’s mostly a blur. She stands where she’s supposed to, and does what she’s supposed to, and follows Jubilee and Cassie down the aisle and watches as Kitty and Piotr exchange vows. She cries, which she’s pretty sure she’s also supposed to do, even though she tries hard not to. (She tries not to look at Matt during the ceremony, too, but that’s an utter failure. Because _holy shit._ She thinks of _The X Files,_ of the silly episode about the weatherman, that goddamn line that’s going to be ringing in her head for the rest of eternity. _Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with._ Christ, she’s not sure she can _stop_ looking at him.) And then there are photos in the snow (which makes it easier to deal with how red she gets when Tess forces Matt into a picture) and back to the hotel for the reception.

It is, indeed, Tommy that she has to dance with. He’s not bad, exactly—he keeps stepping on her feet, but she’s not sure that’s not on purpose. He also doesn’t know her at all, so he can’t exactly tell that she’s really not paying the slightest bit of attention. “Hey,” he says, towards the end of it, when the song’s winding down. “You live in New York, right?”

“Most of the time.” She spins out, and comes back into him, fighting the urge to laugh at the look on Kitty’s face. (Jubilee’s with Teddy, and Cassie’s dancing with Billy, though she’s pretty sure it would have worked out better the other way around.) “Why do you ask?”

“My mom and uncle live up there, that’s all. We should hang if I visit.”

Darcy nearly chokes. “Tommy, are you hitting on me?”

“Nah.” His mouth goes crooked. “I think that’s partly why Kitty invited me, but no. Pretty sure she was worried you were gonna die an old maid.”

“There is _nothing_ wrong with dying an old maid,” she says, and then nearly spits. “Wait, shit, they were going to pair me off with _you_?”

“You don’t have to sound so offended.”

“We would have fucking killed each other.”

Tommy grins. It’s only once she’s twirled twice and the song comes to an end that he says, “Yeah, probably, but the explosion would have been pretty cool.”

“You are granted permission to _hang_ , as the kids put it.” Darcy claps politely for the DJ. She can’t stop grinning, for some reason. “Go dance with Jubilee. I think she’s gonna be mad if you don’t.”

“You think?”

“Boy, I definitely think.”

“Awesome,” Tommy says, and darts off. He doesn’t actually run, but he moves damn fast for someone so skinny. Darcy looks up at the ceiling, at the lights strung along the walls, and then goes to stand by Matt’s chair. He hasn’t budged since they arrived, settled in with his ankles crossed and a flute of champagne and just generally looking content. (Which should not make her palms sweaty, but does. This is _stupid_.) When she puts her fingers to his shoulder, Matt catches her hand, and tugs just enough to make her smile.

“Nobody died.”

“Nope, nobody died.” Except possibly her sense of shame. And dignity. And ignorance. “Last I heard, Uncle Zachary is somewhere in Canada, though that may possibly be an exaggeration. Aunt Tess is pleased, though.” She rocks back and forth. “Christ, my feet hurt.”

“Zachary.” He tugs on her hand again, and yeah. Darcy’s an asshole. She settles on Matt’s lap, and leans into him, because she’s still cold, and she’s in love with him, and she’s going to have to say something and it’ll probably wreck everything, but at least right now she has the excuse of keeping up appearances. At least right now, she can keep pretending that absolutely nothing is different at all, even if everything is. “That’s the one you said was really conservative?”

“The one that’s gonna come to Passover frothing at the mouth because Kitty married a goy? Yeah.”

“Hm.” He tips his head. “Is it so bad to marry a Gentile?”

“I mean, clearly not for us, since nobody here cares. Some people think it’s wrong, though. Like how some Catholics think marrying a Presbyterian or an Episcopal or a Greek Orthodoxer is like…an affront to God.”

“Ah.”

She tugs on the back of his collar. “You really just gonna sit here all night?”

“Figured it was safer than crashing into people,” he says, and no. That is not a thing she is hearing. The wedding’s over, they fly home tomorrow, and she’s not about to let him get away with that.

“You don’t trust me to steer you around?”

He laughs, loud and sharp and lovely. “I’m pretty sure you’d be the one steering me into a wall.”

“Not tonight. I promise no walls tonight.” She stands again. “Come on. It’s not that hard. One song, yeah?”

Matt lifts his head, and she knows he can’t look at her, not the way other people would, but she could swear in that moment that the entirety of him is focused on her. Like he’s trying to memorize it. Then, slowly, he puts out his hand. Darcy takes it, and pulls him up out of the chair.

.

.

.

It’s one in the morning when Darcy kisses Kitty’s cheek, hugs Piotr, and excuses herself to go upstairs. The flight from O’Hare is at eight, which means they have to be out the door by six, and Christ if that isn’t going to be hell on her head especially after champagne. Matt stays behind—“Piotr wants to talk to me about something,” he says, and his hand’s still on the small of her back like it was during the dancing, and before that, the way it’s been for ages; “I’ll be up in a minute,” and Darcy swallows even as she says “Okay” because this is the last night she’s going to have the chance to keep things the same. Lorna’s still down at the bar. It takes half an hour before she can get upstairs, mostly because she has to go around and hug _literally everyone,_ including Tommy, who snickers in her ear like a Lost Boy would.

Gran and Grand went to bed hours ago. When she gets to the twelfth floor, though, Gran is closing the door of their room behind her, her silvery-red hair bound up at the top of her head still. Darcy blinks. “What are you doing awake?”

“I thought you’d come up around now,” she says. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

“We already said goodbye earlier.”

“Don’t argue with me,” Katerina says. “Besides, I thought you’d want some of the photographs. I know there was a professional downstairs, and Kitty and Piotr will share all the rest of them before the week is out, but polaroids are special. You can’t lie through polaroids.”

“Well, you can, but you have to try damn hard.” Darcy takes the envelope Gran hands her, and folds her fingers over it. “Thanks, Gran.”

She touches Darcy’s cheek. “You go back to New York tomorrow?”

“I have to go back to school in a few days. And I think Jen might melt into a puddle of radioactive sludge if I don’t get back. She doesn’t clean when she’s on a hard case, and the sink is going to be super nasty.” She shrugs. “She really didn’t want to miss the wedding, but then this case came up and she couldn’t get away.”

“Tell her we love her,” says Katerina. “And that she was missed.”

“Can do.”

At the end of the hall, a door slams. Downstairs, the reception is still roaring away. Her mother’s still hanging around the open bar, probably. Darcy sighs through her nose. Katerina tugs at the hem of her sleeve, half-smiling. “You stay away too long, every time.”

“Well, law school’s hard.”

“We all like him, you know,” she says, and Darcy presses the tip of her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth to keep from choking. It’s one thing to hypothesize about a thing, and another to hear it straight from the source. “Well—your mother might be an exception, but she always is.”

She can’t help it. Darcy snorts. “Since when has Mom ever liked anything I’ve done?”

“Regardless. I like him, Kitty likes him. Even your aunt Renee likes him, and you know how hard that can be.” She touches Darcy’s cheek again, and then catches her free hand, squeezing. “You suit.”

Something presses warm and thick in her throat. “Gran,” she says, and then switches to Russian. “Matt and me, we’re not—”

“Shh.” Katerina shakes her head. “He suits you, no matter who he is. You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”

There’s not really anything she can say to that. Darcy swallows a few times, and then bends a little to wrap her arms around her grandmother. She smells like vanilla perfume, like familiar laundry soap and the same shampoo she’s been using for nearly forty years. Katerina holds onto her for a breathless moment, and then pushes her away, breathing out.

“You need to sleep.”

“Yeah.” Darcy dabs at her eyes. “I’ll call you when I land, okay?”

“Take a look at the photos,” says Katerina. “There are some good ones of you.”

“Okay.”

Darcy’s changed into her shitty sweatpants and tossed her bra into her suitcase by the time she finally remembers the photographs. She hooks the towel over her shoulder, rubbing absently at her wet hair. There _are_ good ones. Kitty looks brilliant and shining, no trace of the nerves from yesterday. There’s Piotr smiling, gigantic and shy; a shot of Darcy dancing with Tommy, Billy, and Teddy, hand in hand in hand. Cassie giggling into her champagne glass. There’s even a snap of Darcy and her mother, for once not looking like they’re ready to start tossing things. Probably because Lorna’s not talking, and Darcy’s sitting at another table.

There’s one image, though, towards the middle of the pack. Someone must have snapped it when she was talking to Matt about Kitty and Piotr and Uncle Zachary, because she’s sprawled sideways over his lap. Neither of them are really paying attention, to the camera or to the crowd; their faces are just close enough to almost touch, and Darcy can’t remember leaning in that far. She can’t remember tangling her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, either, or propping her elbow on his shoulder. Nor can she remember him hooking an arm around her, but there it is, one hand on her waist, the other resting on her knees. She can’t remember any of it, but every bit of that is here, staring up at her in glossy print. And God, but when she looks at it, actually looks—

She touches her fingers to the photograph, to the slick surface of the paper. In the photo, it doesn’t look like this is a joke. It doesn’t look like they’re pretending. She looks at the expression on her face, because that soft look—photo Darcy is looking at photo Matt, and her eyes and her lips and her hands are saying a thousand things. _Mine,_ or _precious,_ or _loved_ , or _awed_ , or _adoring._ All of that makes sense now, every bit of it, because just—fucking light switches and bad timing and every other fucking thing. But photo Matt—the smile on his face bites at her heart, because she’s seen him smile like that before, but never quite in this way, not like this. From the outside, that smile—it says things she can’t even begin to fathom. Lopsided and soft and just barely sad, and God, the look on his face. She’s never seen that look with anybody but her.

Darcy touches the photograph again. She can’t quite move. Water drips from her hair to her sweatpants.

There’s a pip from the door when the lock snaps open, and then Matt slips through. Worst timing ever, she thinks. That or the best. She’s been sitting there frozen long enough that she’s icy cold, staring at the photo, trying to think. Darcy clears her throat, and he lifts his head. “You’re quiet. I didn’t think you were in here.”

“I was thinking.” Her voice is a little hoarse. There’s one bed in this room, and there was one bed in her bedroom in Atlanta, and there’s the lingering feeling of his mouth on her forehead and his arms around her and _Christ, have I always looked at him like that?_ “What did Piotr say?”

Matt smiles, crooked and abrupt, and tugs at the knot of his tie. She doesn’t even really hear his answer. She’s stuck in the smile, the same tilting tender smile, and her heart jumps and tumbles. Darcy’s up off the bed and darted into him before she thinks, and when she slides her hands up into his hair and pulls him down to her, she can’t breathe.

Matt chokes when she kisses him, stiff and shocked and confused. There’s a split second where she thinks she might have been wrong. Then he cups both his hands to the base of her neck and presses into her, bent and stumbling. There’s an odd little thump when she pushes him back into the door, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His lips taste like coffee, like jam and like cream, and when he tips and leans closer into her mouth it’s as if something clicks into place. Darcy makes a tiny sound, lips parting, and then his tongue is in her mouth and his hands are in her hair and she’s melting, she’s falling apart, she’s building herself back up just to break all over again when he shifts, drawing back and then returning, kissing her until they’re tangled.

It’s a long time before they stop, before she presses her face into his throat. Darcy tries very hard to breathe. Her heart is pounding. She can hear him lick his lips, feels it when he swallows. “What was that for?” he says, and his voice, God, low and curling and hoarse and utterly lovely. “I’m not—just. What brought that on?”

She thinks about the photograph. “You smiled,” she says, and he shivers all over for some reason, a sudden vibrant trembling. “I never saw how before, but—but you smiled.”

“All of that because I smiled?”

She shakes her head once. She can’t explain it. She’s not sure he even knows how he smiles, like she’s beautiful, like he’s happy when she’s there. Like she’s everything. “Just—how long?”

“How long, what?”

“You know what.”

When she lifts her head, Matt tips her chin up and kisses her again, shy this time, as if he thinks she’s going to pull away. Darcy settles her hand to the curve of his neck and holds him there, going up onto her toes to push back into his mouth. He kisses her until she’s breathless again, until she’s boneless, until she’s not quite sure of up from down. Then he shifts, and he’s still close enough that she can feel his lips moving when he says, “Always, I think.”

She’s the one to tremble, this time. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She could _shake_ him. Darcy starts to cry, and hiccups. “You could have _said_ something, idiot! Were you just—oh, Christ.”

“Pros and cons.” He feathers his mouth to hers, again, and again. “Pros and cons and just—I didn’t _need_ to say anything, I didn’t want to wreck it, not with this—”

And she opens her mouth to argue with him, but then she shuts it again, because hasn’t that been what’s going through her head all day? “For _five years_? But—”

“Being friends was enough,” he says. “It’s— God, Darcy, I wasn’t waiting, it would have always been enough, just the way it was, but—”

“But then this—”

“Piotr figured it out,” he says, and _shit._ Darcy squeezes her eyes shut. “Piotr figured it out, I don’t know how. That’s what we were talking about, just—about whether I should say anything. I was—I was going to talk to you when we landed in the city.”

“I was going to talk to _you_ when we landed in the city, I talked to Foggy—”

“Darcy.” Matt cups her face in his hands, touches his mouth to her eyebrow, to her cheek. “How long for you?”

Darcy draws her thumbs along the spaces behind his ears, into his hair. “Since you bought me the Rosa Luxemburg book. Or—or since I saw your face with the star charts, or since Intro to Criminal Justice, or—I don’t know. I can’t remember. Just—”

 _Just kiss me again,_ she thinks, _just smile,_ and Matt does both. They stand, Matt’s back against the door, his hands dropping to her waist, and they kiss for what feels like hours. She thinks her arteries might actually pop inside her. She’s feeling so much, and she can’t stop. There are words on her lips that she can’t speak, but she thinks he might be knotting himself up in the shape of them anyway. _I think I love you. I know I love you. I don’t want this to be a lie anymore. Stay with me._ They’re on her hands and they’re on her mouth and her tongue and in her hair, marked deep into her palms as she touches his ribs, his face, his hips, his shoulders. _Stay with me. I love you. Stay._

“Hey,” she says, when they finally slip apart, even though she’s still wound close into him like a clinging vine. “Hey, um. Do you want to maybe get coffee when we get back to New York?”

Matt blinks at her for a moment. Then he starts laughing. He’s still laughing when he kisses her again, and Darcy realizes she’s grinning. She’s not certain she’s going to be able to stop.


End file.
